Thursday, October 1, 2015

Genesis and the Big Bang (Part 6)



(Gen 1:4), “God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.  God called the light day, and the darkness He called night…”  After the expansion of the universe had proceeded, light separated from the darkness.  Only recently have scientists come to understand that darkness is not just the absence of light, but that a physical “darkness” exists in the universe, commonly referred to as black holes.  Long before scientists discovered the existence of black holes, Isaiah wrote that God is, “The One forming light and creating darkness,” (Isa 45:7).  If darkness had simply been the absence of light, then no creation would have been required.

In scripture, the original light of the Creator is seen to diminish during the progression of the creation story.  By the fourth day, the sun, moon, and stars become the predominant lights.  The Hebrew sages saw this sequence and suggested that the light from the Creator diminished by one-seventh for each day of creation.  By the time man is created, near the end of day six, the illumination of God in the creation has diminished to one-seventh of the strength at the beginning.  This understanding is derived from the words of Isaiah who prophesied of a future time when...

“The light of the moon will be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be seven times brighter, like the light of seven days, on the day the LORD binds up the fracture of His people and heals the bruise He has inflicted,” (Isa 30:26). 

The diminishment of the original creation light was seen by the Sages as a metaphor for the Creator in the present age.  The LORD God willingly “veiled” His original presence, as the Psalmist wrote, “He made darkness His hiding place, His canopy around Him, Darkness of waters, thick clouds of the skies.” (Psa 18:9-11).  At some future date, the glory of the LORD will provide sufficient illumination to negate the need for the sun and the moon, (Rev 21:22, 22:4-5).  This “veiling” of God in the present world permits mankind to act with freewill so we can both earn rewards and be held accountable for our actions on this earth.

The study of light is also a fascinating topic.  Sometimes light acts as a particle beam, while at other times acting as a wave.  In the late 1880’s, Albert Michelson and Edward Morley recorded no effect on the speed of light whether it was measured in the direction of the earth’s rotation, counter to the earth’s rotation, or perpendicular to the earth’s rotation.  This was considered an amazing find, one that was beyond explanation at the time.  Two decades later, Albert Einstein “had the courage to state that regardless of the velocity of the observer, toward or away from a source of light, the speed of that light remains constant…It defies all logic.” [1]   

Scientists now accept the speed of light as an unchangeable constant, independent of the speed of the object emitting the light or the speed of the observer.  The speed of the moving object or the observer causes a shift in the frequency of the light waves so that the speed of light remains constant.  This frequency shift produces a change in the color that is observed to determine if the object is moving toward or away from the observer.  In this way, scientists are able to determine that the universe is expanding as they observe the “redshift” of distant galaxies moving away from the earth.


[1] Genesis and the Big Bang, Dr. Gerald L. Schroeder, Ph.D., 1990 Edition, page 42

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