Chapter One - A Skeptics Guide to Christianity

Chapter One:
The Creation

The first story which we come to in the Bible is the creation of the universe, the Earth, and human beings. Let’s begin at the beginning. All bold-face emphasis is mine. All bible verses are from the New King James version.


Genesis 1
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 And the earth was waste and empty, and darkness was on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
3 And God said, Let there be light. And there was light. 4 And God saw the light that it was good; and God divided between the light and the darkness. 5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.


The first verse states that the heavens and the earth were created. In other words, they had a beginning. This word "created" is different from the word "made," in that the universe was not constructed from pre-existent materials. If "the heavens and the earth" can be thought of as our universe, then it had a singular beginning point. This has been proven to actually be the case, called the Big Bang Theory in cosmology and astronomy.


The second verse states that the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. This word, hovering, was also translated as "moved" in the King James version. However, hovering is the correct idea, as a bird hovers over its young. In fact, this word is only used once again in Deuteronomy in this sense.


DEUTERONOMY 32
11 As an eagle stirs up its nest,
Hovers over its young,
Spreading out its wings, taking them up,
Carrying them on its wings


The idea is that the Spirit of God is birdlike in some respect. This is also demonstrated at the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist.


Matthew 3
16When He had been baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting upon Him. 17And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."


Does this mean that the Spirit of God is a bird? Perhaps to a literalist. I find that this description was the best one which a human could make when the Spirit of God was made visible. This is an example of something being true, yet not necessarily literally true. At least this description shows a consistency between Genesis and the Gospel of Matthew. We will continue to look for such consistencies as we go along. If the first and last books of the Bible are consistent, we can feel assured that everything in between is too.


The third verse of Genesis chapter one mentions the nature of light. Quantum physicists have found that light is the key to understanding the universe. Light was the foundation upon which Albert Einstein developed his theories of relativity. It is a constant of nature and entered into his famous equation: E=mc2. In this equation, the variables energy and mass are convertible into each other, differing only by a ratio of the speed of light squared. Einstein’s equation was proven in 1945 with the successful explosion of an atomic bomb.


Light had been the stuff out of which all the sub-atomic particles of the Standard Model of quantum point-particle physics were made. Photons are the building blocks of light, its force wave/particles. Under the proper conditions, two photons can merge into a pi meson. Two other photons can merge into an electron-positron pair. The positron combines with the pi meson to create a proton. The remaining electron then orbits the proton, creating a hydrogen atom. Thus, four photons become one hydrogen atom. All stars, our earth, and even ourselves began with hydrogen atoms!


Roger Penrose of Oxford University created an approach to quantum physics called spin networks and Twistor Theory. He began his physics in a massless world of null lines which consist of light rays. Mass enters as a derived notion or by-product. Here Genesis supports modern quantum physics!


The Gospel of John begins in a way which is similar to that of Genesis and involves the creation of light.


John 1
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things received being through him, and without him not one thing received being which has received being. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men.
5 And the light appears in darkness, and the darkness apprehended it not. 6 There was a man sent from God, his name John. 7 He came for witness, that he might witness concerning the light, that all might believe through him. 8 He was not the light, but that he might witness concerning the light. 9 The true light was that which, coming into the world, lightens every man. 10 He was in the world, and the world had its being through him, and the world knew him not. 11 He came to His own, and His own received him not; 12 but as many as received him, to them gave He the right to be children of God, to those that believe on His name; 13 who have been born, not of blood, nor of flesh’s will, nor of man’s will, but of God. 14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we have contemplated His glory, a glory as of an only-begotten with a father), full of grace and truth.


Again we have a consistent theme from Genesis to the New Testament, namely the connection of God to light. This light had taken various forms in the Bible. Let’s look at a few of them. First, God and fire. Was the Apostle John being poetic or figurative in relating the Christ to light? The answer is yes and no. To understand this we should look at God’s glory.

The Glory


Moses was one of the first men since Adam to witness God’s glory which appeared to him as fire.
Exodus 3
1Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. And he led the flock to the back of the desert, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2And the Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush. So he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed.


Exodus 13
21And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so as to go by day and night. 22He did not take away the pillar of cloud by day or the pillar of fire by night from before the people.


Later, this light and fire is called the Glory by the prophet Isaiah.


Isaiah 4
5then the Lord will create above every dwelling place of Mount Zion, and above her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day and the shining of a flaming fire by night. For over all the glory there will be a covering.


Exodus 16
6Then Moses and Aaron said to all the children of Israel, "At evening you shall know that the Lord has brought you out of the land of Egypt. 7"And in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord; for He hears your complaints against the Lord. But what are we, that you complain against us?"
10Now it came to pass, as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the children of Israel, that they looked toward the wilderness, and behold, the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud.


Exodus 24
16Now the glory of the Lord rested on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days. And on the seventh day He called to Moses out of the midst of the cloud. 17The sight of the glory of the Lord was like a consuming fire on the top of the mountain in the eyes of the children of Israel. 18So Moses went into the midst of the cloud and went up into the mountain. And Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights.


I can cite a dozen more examples, but this should be sufficient to connect God with something called the Glory, which is like light, fire, and cloud. The New Testament example of this is the transfiguration of Jesus.


Matthew 17
1Now after six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, led them up on a high mountain by themselves; 2and He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light. 3And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with Him. 4Then Peter answered and said to Jesus, "Lord, it is good for us to be here; if You wish, let us make here three tabernacles: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." 5While he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them; and suddenly a voice came out of the cloud, saying, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear Him!"


Again we have the cloud of Glory and Jesus’ transfiguration where His face and clothes became white as the light and as intense as the sun. God’s voice spoke from the cloud with the same words He used when Jesus was baptized in the Jordan river. At that time, the Spirit of God descended like a dove, bearing witness to the presence of God.


In another place in the Bible, the glory which radiated from the presence of God was able to irradiate Moses and cause his space-time flesh to glow.

Exodus 34
29Now it was so, when Moses came down from Mount Sinai (and the two tablets of the Testimony were in Moses’ hand when he came down from the mountain), that Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone while he talked with Him. 30So when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come near him. 31Then Moses called to them, and Aaron and all the rulers of the congregation returned to him; and Moses talked with them. 32Afterward all the children of Israel came near, and he gave them as commandments all that the Lord had spoken with him on Mount Sinai. 33And when Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil on his face. 34But whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak with Him, he would take the veil off until he came out; and he would come out and speak to the children of Israel whatever he had been commanded. 35And whenever the children of Israel saw the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses’ face shone, then Moses would put the veil on his face again, until he went in to speak with Him.


The presence of God is experienced by mankind as a kind of glory, light, or fire which has the ability to irradiate. As the Apostle John said:


1 John 1
5This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.


Does this mean that God is composed of photons? A literalist might think so, but here again we have to expand our understanding and not hold to a strictly literal meaning. If God was some type of superior being composed of photons only, then He would be a captive of space-time. He would be contained within the universe and not a transcendent being. Genesis says that God created the universe. It didn’t create Him. It says that God created light, and from this massless foundation, all things in the universe took their forms, including mass, spin, time, and space.


The creation of light and the consequences of this creation, namely: photons, electrons, quarks, protons, neutrons (and their anti-particles), a multi-dimensional space-time (perhaps eleven in all) collapsing down to our familiar four dimensional space-time were accomplished on the first day. Was this a twenty-four hour day? I think not. After all, the spin of the earth determines the length of an "earth-day." This "day" is a much broader concept. The Hebrew word for seven means complete or full.


[b'c;
shaÆba>, shaw-bah’; a primitive root meaning to be complete.
[b'v,
sheba>, sheh’-bah; or (masculine)
h[;b]vi
shib>aÆh, shib-aw’; a primitive cardinal number; the sacred full one.


Seven days signifies a complete or full cycle of time or actions. It does not necessarily indicate seven 24-hour days. We will see the significance of the number seven in our last chapter, Quantum Christ.


The order of creation is not unreasonable. Light and its associated by-products were created on the first day. What about the second day?

The Firmament and Heavens


Genesis 1
6Then God said, "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters." 7Thus 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. 8And God called the firmament Heaven. So the evening and the morning were the second day.
What is a firmament? It appears to be an atmosphere of some kind. Let’s look at some definitions.


The firmament is an expanse of sky. It derives from the following Hebrew words:
raÆqéÆya> (['yqir), an expanse, the visible arch of the sky.
raÆqa> ([q'r), the root word meaning to pound, to expand by hammering, to overlay (with thin sheets of metal):— beat, make broad, spread abroad (forth, over, out, into plates), stamp, stretch.


Note that the root word means to pound, as the Greek god Hephaistos (the Roman Vulcan) pounded out the sky as a black-smith beats and spreads sheets of metal. Why metal? To hang the stars on, of course. Does this mean that the Bible represents an untruthful view of the sky? Here, again, we have to make distinctions within context. In the context of the time in which the ancient stories of the Bible were written and collected, the Hebrews as well as many other peoples believed the stars were attached to celestial spheres which were solid. This isn’t, of course, what modern people believe, but then again, we have the luxury of centuries of scientific instrumentation at our disposal now.



So should we reject the Bible because it retains many archaic and out-of-fashion views of the world? I think not. Always remember the context in which scripture was written. The Bible was never intended to be a science book. It is a sacred collection of ancient writings describing the nature and plans of an infinite transcendent multi-dimensional Creator to finite, fallible, space-time creatures like ourselves. What about the third day?

The Emergence of Land


Genesis 1
9Then God said, "Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear"; and it was so. 10And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas. And God saw that it was good. 11Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth"; and it was so. 12And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 13So the evening and the morning were the third day.


Land with its vegetation comes into being out of the first waters. The Spirit of God hovered over the waters, and this Spirit is dove-like in appearance when we make reference to Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan. We will see a similarity between this creation story and the story of Noah for he released a dove in order to determine if land had emerged yet out of the flood.


Let’s skip over the fourth day for the moment and look at the fifth day.


Genesis 1
20Then God said, "Let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the face of the firmament of the heavens." 21So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22And God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth." 23So the evening and the morning were the fifth day.


God created the sea creatures and the birds. So far, this isn’t that much different then our modern scientific view. Science is based experiment. An experiment can be done by anyone at anytime and should yield the same results. However, much of science cannot be proven by experiment. Without proof, these scientific ideas remain as theories. Much of quantum physics is theory. No particle accelerator exists which can probe matter near the Planck length of 10-33 centimeters. In like manner, the geophysical evolution of our earth cannot be proven by experiment, nor can the theory of evolution. They are accepted on the basis of faith, not religious faith, but scientific faith.


We know that the Big Bang created all the energy, as well as space-time contained in our universe. We know that this energy condensed out into atoms and molecules, forming hydrogen gas. We know that hydrogen gas, with gravity, formed the galaxies and stars. We know that old stars exploded as supernovae and made the heavier elements, which were collected into new generations of stars and planets.


We know that water vapor condensed out as the earth cooled and became deep oceans, and that upheavals in the earth core rose continents out of this ocean at various times in earth’s history. We know that life began first in the ocean and moved slowly onto the land.


In place of know we should substitute the word believe. Yet, in its basic outline, Genesis agrees so far with the scientific view. Finally, on the sixth day mankind and the land animals came into being. It is this section where Genesis and science depart ways.


Man and the Animals


Genesis 1
24Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind: cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth, each according to its kind"; and it was so. 25And God made the beast of the earth according to its kind, cattle according to its kind, and everything that creeps on the earth according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
26Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." 27So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28Then God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth."
29And God said, "See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. 30"Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food"; and it was so. 31Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
What is important here is not a literal view of mankind coming into existence within a single twenty-four hour day, but the order in which man appeared. He came into being with the land creatures, after life had made its way out of the ocean on to the land. He was made late, following the animals who were made before him. Does this conform to the Theory of Evolution? Only in its outline. Both the Bible and Darwin have man as the ultimate result of a long process from light energy, to matter, to the creation of the earth, the condensation of the oceans, the emergence of land, life beginning in the seas and moving on to the land. This basic order and outline doesn’t contradict the Bible’s outline of creation. How does this square up with the theory of evolution?


Christianity and Evolution


There doesn’t seem to be an issue with more controversy between scientists and Christians then that of the evolution of mankind. Frankly, I don’t see what the problem is. The buzz word which divide the opposing ranks is random. Evolutionists believe that all life came about by a random process of chance. Christians believe there was intelligent design in the universe.


One of the interesting developments in astronomy is Anthropic Cosmology. Anthropic means "of man." It is a cosmology, a study of the origin and nature of the cosmos or universe, which deals with man’s place in it. The idea is that, somehow, the universe is finely tuned to have brought mankind into existence.


It is a fact that mankind exists. It is a fact that we have consciousness. I think, therefore I am. Yet, the question is why do we exist at all? Wouldn’t it be far more probable that mankind should never have come into existence? After all, considering the violence of the Big Bang that created our universe, the necessary explosions of supernovae which created heavier elements, the formation of our solar system, the initial molten heat of our earth – how could we expect to exist at all? We have soft complex bodies which need a temperate range, not too hot or cold. We need water, oxygen, and food, but so do bacteria and protozoa. The highest form of animal life on earth could well have been the chimpanzee. It was smart enough. Or perhaps the porpoise. It also has a high degree of intelligence. Yet mankind is so much smarter than chimpanzees and porpoises. How did this come to be?


There is a painting by Paul Gauguin upon which he wrote: "D’ou Venons Nous, Que Commes Nous, Ou Allons Nous" – Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? These are the questions which mankind has been asking since he was able to perceive himself and the world. Where do we come from? Did we evolve through time by some natural and random process or were we created by an Intelligent Designer? What are we? Are we animals? Are we "a little lower than the angels?" Are we the image of God? Where are we going? Do our bodies simply disintegrate back into the elements of which they were made when we die? Does our consciousness cease with death, or does it somehow continue to exist and to think?


Many of the founding fathers of our country were Deists. They thought of God as a creator who wound up the universe like a great clock, then left it alone to run itself, ticking away millenia to millenia, without God’s direct daily control. Many Christians, and even secular scientists, see intelligent design in our universe. Eden is the universe. Adam was created from the dust of the earth. The dust, itself, was created by supernovae explosions billions of years ago.


The order in which the world was created, as given in Genesis, is not unreasonable. It starts with light as being the stuff from which matter and energy was made. It then describes the formation of the oceans, then the land, the ocean creatures, and then the land creatures. All of these events fall into general evolutionary theory in terms of order. In the same way, the Bible puts the creation of man as last among the animals. This is also in accord with evolutionary theory. Modern man only arose about 100,000 years ago in Africa.


The main problem is whether mankind came into existence by some random process. This is the crux of the problem of evolution. The time scales are not the issue once the distinction between mythic and chronological time is made. It is whether mankind came into being by accident or purpose. This is a matter of faith. When I look at the stars above me, see the sunset over the ocean, watch birds fly, see the colors of a rainbow or a butterfly’s wings, I can’t bring myself to believe that this is all an accident. That I have consciousness to appreciate these things, to me, cannot be an accident. That I can ponder my own existence and have a sense of a Holy God all lead me to believe there is really an Intelligent Designer behind it all.


One can be a good Christian and believe in the theory of evolution too! Yet, what is the purpose of human evolution? Why are we here? There was an interesting observation made by a Jesuit priest who was also a scientist. His name was Teilhard de Chardin.


Teilhard de Chardin acquired a world-wide reputation as a paleontologist specializing in the evolution of man. He was also a Jesuit priest. He began lecturing in the 1920’s about his speculations on combining Catholicism with evolution. As a result, the leaders of the Jesuit order exiled him to China to prevent him from discussing his views in his native France. He was forbidden to publish any of his works in his lifetime. When a chair in paleontology became vacant at the college de France, he was not permitted to apply for that position. He moved to New York City where he died in 1955. He is buried in the cemetery of a small monastery fifty miles from New York, exiled even in death from his beloved France.


A concept developed by de Chardin was the Omega Point. The Omega Point was identified with Christ, who in the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity is the manifestation of God in the physical universe.


"…Omega itself is…at the end of the whole process, in as much as in it the movement of synthesis culminates. Yet we must be careful to note that under this evolutive facet Omega still only reveals half of itself. While being the last term of its series, it is also outside all series. Not only does it crown, but it closes … If by its very nature it did not escape from time and space which it gathers together, it would not be Omega." (Italics are de Chardin’s).1


What does this mean? Jesus is the space-time manifestation of God. Jesus is the four-dimensional manifestation of an hyper-dimensional God. Jesus is the culmination of the physicality of mankind, the end point of human evolution, revealing half of Himself, that part which is in our physical world, his humanity. Yet, Jesus lives outside of all series, including physical evolution because He is God. Jesus transcends our space-time universe as the Second Person of the Trinity.


Is the driving force of evolution really natural selection? Or possibly, does evolution take place because God had decided to manifest Himself into our space-time universe as the Christ? According to de Chardin, Christ is the endpoint of human evolution.


1 P. Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, rev. English transl.
(Harper & Row, colophon edn, NY, 1975), pgs. 270-271

Spotnitz

I had a dream last night, and in this dream I kept repeating the word "Spotnitz." When I woke up, I was curious about this word so I Googled it. I saw it associated with Frank Spotnitz, who was born in Japan, went to U.C.L.A. I also went to U.C.L.A., studied in Japan my junior year, and was in the M.F.A. program at U.C.L.A.'s film school. I'm also working on a script dealing with the Mayan calendar ending 2012. I don't know if there's a connection or not. Stranger things have happened. This dream lead me to open up a blog, which is what I'm writing right now. The larger subject I am interested in is archeo-astronomy and its connection to world religions and mythology. The whole theme is titled "The Legend of the World Savior." This is because every major religion has a "Second Coming" arch-type, whether it is Christ's Second Coming, the Maitreya Buddha, the Tenth Incarnation of Vishnu, the return of Quetzalcoatl/Kukulkan, or the Hawaiian Lono - it's all related, it seems, to astronomy and the Precession of the Equinoxes, and (who knows?) maybe to the Mayan long count calendar ending date of 2012 A.D. So, Frank Spotnitz if you are listening, let me know. This random dream may have been a synchronicity.