Old Testament scenario of the origin and the universe 3,4,5

On the third day, according to the Book of Genesis, two things happened: first, the “dry land” was created, and with it the vegetation. The first of these events can be correlated with the third important stage of the scientific scenario, cosmic structuring, i.e., galaxies and stars. It is indeed the beginning of the emergence of a “dry land” because such a phenomenon can only occur in a structured universe. The Book of Genesis also places the origin of flora until now, which is scientifically unacceptable. The problem could be overcome by stating that humanity did not consider vegetation to be living objects when Genesis was written. For them, it was simply the “hair of the earth.” However, there is nothing to prevent us from trying to see some hidden and non-trivial expression of a certain serious idea in this formulation.

We know that life also requires the presence of other elements known from chemistry, especially carbon. Still, according to the scientific scenario, these could appear only when the oldest suns exploded after depletion of their hydrogen fuel as the so-called supernovae, which brought gas-dust matter into space, enriched with other chemical elements. The next generation’s sons were created from it, and only then could they become the germ of the origin of life, including plants. However, recent information from scientific circles suggests that a certain – albeit tiny – percentage of chemical elements other than hydrogen and helium may have formed in the early stages of the universe, so potentially the foundations could begin to lay the groundwork for the recovery of dead matter.

However, there is another and perhaps more likely version of the history of life on our Earth. Many experts are seriously considering whether life could not be brought to our planet from anywhere in space. They argue that the time interval of several hundred thousand years, which experts in the scientific scenario of the origin of life are willing to admit, is too short to carry out the complex processes leading to the revival of dead matter. They believe that the transfer of life from other space sites (for example, through meteors) seems more likely. This inspires the idea that somewhere in space, “dry land” was created earlier than in our locality due to a more favorable grouping of conditions. Based on such a consideration, we could conclude that even the mention of vegetation’s existence on the “third day” of creation could have a real informative value.

Let us add that there are still quite a few unresolved problems around the origin of life, especially among believers. Many believe that the revival of the dead matter is a direct intervention of the Creator. Many prominent scientists (among them, for example, the Nobel Prize winner I. Prigogine, but also the prominent Christian thinker P. Teilhard de Chardin) believe that external intervention was unnecessary and that life can also be understood as a product of a spontaneous evolutionary process. We will return to this problem in a separate article.

The fourth day of creation is the day of the Sun and the Moon’s origin, i.e., the day of our solar system’s origin. There is no serious discrepancy between the biblical and scientific scenarios, not only in terms of content but also in time. At present, science can describe this process quite mathematically and puts it in time in the second half of the universe’s history, which correlates with biblical information.

A difference in the wording can be seen in the fact that the Bible speaks of a single solar system, but according to the scientific scenario, a relatively large number of them could have arisen. But then, a very natural question arises whether intelligent beings also inhabit other solar systems. Optimists believe that there must be many civilizations in the universe, but many scientists believe that life is only on our planet. They argue that a solar system with ambitions to become the abode of life and man would have exceptional characteristics. And it is doubtful that, given the great randomness of the processes (leading to the formation of solar systems), another system similar to ours could occur somewhere. This is not impossible but very unlikely. If life does not really occur anywhere else in the universe, then our Earth is not an absolutely insignificant powder in the universe, as presented by astrophysics, but literally, its center, because it has become the home of the crown of creation as the only object in the universe. And that would actually be a return to the original religious idea of ​​our Earth.

According to the Book of Genesis, the real day of life and living beings’ origin is the fifth day. These were mainly aquatic animals and birds. This correlates very well with the scientific scenario, according to which it took place – on a microscopic level – after about 11-12 billion years.