Time to go into another heavy-handed topic. This one is on The Bible and the reality of the stories that happened in the Bible. Although it’s not my job to convert people, I do have some explanations that prove that the Bible still makes sense in today’s age.
So here’s the lowdown. As time went on, we made many more discoveries, in science, history, and other fields of knowledge. These facts tend to change over time. But holy scriptures, like the Bible and the Quran, were written as static documents that are not to be tampered with. This can lead to a disagreement. Remember “alternative facts”? This is what it’s like. But rather than making up new facts on the spot, these are old stories that remained unchanged as new information arise.
Here’s the problem. To a religious person, denying God makes you a fool, but denying science makes you ignorant. Several scientific theories contradict some of the stories in the Bible. Bible literalists would deny science and make anti-science websites like Conservapedia. Humanists would deny all existence of the supernatural. If you don’t reject science, but believe in God, you might be interested into this blog since it has information that ties both the Bible and reality.
Six Days to Create the Universe:
Let there be light! The first story in the Bible is how God created the universe. He has no beginning and no ending, just like a line in geometry. On the first day, he created day and night. On the second day, he created the air. On the third day, he created the land, water, and plants. On the fourth day, he created the sun, moon, and stars. On the fifth day, he created the creatures from the waters (fish and sea creatures and from the skies (birds). And on the sixth day, he created land animals and humans. The seventh day was when he rested. All of this was 7,535 years ago.
Science tells a different story. According to our current scientific theories, the universe began 13.7 billion years ago, which is more than a million times longer than the history of humanity. And the Earth was formed 4.6 billion years ago, with the Sun being born out of a nebula, which also made rocks that collided with each other and formed a planet. 3.5 billion of these years, there was life on the Earth. And for 541 million of these years, we had more complex life. The Paleozoic Era was an age of ancient life, when most animals were invertebrates and when most plants were either algae or plants with no roots or leaves. The next era was the Mesozoic Era. This was the age of dominant reptiles, ferns, and gymnosperms (basically cycads and conifers like the pine tree). And then, we had the Cenozoic Era, the age of dominant mammals and angiosperms (basically flowering plants, which includes deciduous trees, palm trees, and even grass). Just a small fraction of the Cenozoic Era is where the entire history of humanity lies. I could trim this down even further, to the history of Christianity (little over 2,000 years), the history of the United States (250 years), and even the 20th century (100 years, already over). Basically speaking, the Earth and life on Earth has been here for much longer than what the Bible says.
So here’s a question to ask. How long is one day to God? When the Bible said God took six days to create the universe, it didn’t specify how long one day is. It didn’t even specify if the days were any consistent. One day could be 5 billion years, and the next day is only 3 hours long. But that is not enough to tie creation with evolution.
Helping Theories:
Did you know that the idea of Heaven and Hell being in a different dimension than our physical world is not an old idea? For the longest time, people believed that Heaven was simply above the Earth while Hell was simply below the Earth. They didn’t think it would be part of another dimension. It wasn’t until the 20th century when new scientific theories were developed, which invalidated the facts that Heaven and Hell are simply above and below. Additionally, the depictions of Heaven as a city over clouds is not quite accurate according to the Bible. Since God, Jesus, the angels, and souls are supernatural, they aren’t bound to follow the laws of science. The development of the idea that Heaven and Hell were of a different dimension can also explain why the six days to create the universe makes sense.
In God’s dimension, he literally spent six 24-hour periods to make the Earth and the universe surrounding the Earth, where each hour is 3,600 seconds. In our dimensions, that was billions of years. It’s just like how in books, movies, and video games, time doesn’t flow exactly the same as it does in real life. Years may pass within one game during the same day the player is playing the game. If God was working on the Earth in another dimension, this may possibly be the case. But time must’ve moved faster in his setting. It may also be possible that it’s only been one week since the crucifixion of Jesus in God’s time, but he may have also synchronized his time with our time now that Jesus has forgiven the sins of his followers.
Now another question ponders. If his six days to make the universe is equivalent to the 13.7 billion years we lived in, wouldn’t the events in the Bible be out of order when compared to science? The answer is yes. As said before, he created the sun, moon, and stars on the fourth day, while on the third day, he created the land and water. It is clear that the Sun existed before the Earth, because it’s the Sun that’s the center of mass in the solar system, not the Earth. Without the Sun, the Earth wouldn’t have existed. Call me crazy, but I’m going to bring up Animal Crossing and one of its controversial mechanics – time traveling.
In all Animal Crossing games, including New Horizons, you can change the clock to any time. This can help you rush through house expansions, orders, and project completions, while also giving you access to catching all of the fish and bugs in every season, all in one month or two. What’s even crazier is that if you went so forward in time to get something, then go back in time to when you started your town or island, it doesn’t erase the progress you have made. For instance, let’s say you created an island in New Horizons on March 20th, 2020. Over the next two months, you focused on completing your museum, expanding your house, collecting all of the DIYs, and terraforming the island to your vision. It would be March 20th, 2021 by the time you finished, but in real life, it was finished on May 20th, 2020. You then go back in time to May 20th of 2020. All of the work you put into your island, it’s still there, even though it’s long before you would’ve gotten it done have you played it naturally.
This can explain how God created the universe. He not only spent six days to create a universe that lasted 13.7 billion years ago, but he also must’ve time traveled to before the creation of the land on the fourth day to create the Sun, stars, and the process of how the Sun made the land. Kinda like how video game programmers add in the objects before adding in the scripts that create the objects. If it makes sense that traveling back in time in Animal Crossing won’t undo your progress, it would also make sense that God created the universe in six days in the order according to the Bible and how it ties to our current scientific theories.
Adam and Eve:
At the beginning of our history, God created two humans. The first man ever is Adam, and the first woman ever is Eve. They were told to take care of the Garden of Eden, but they were not allowed to eat fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The Serpent tricked Eve into getting fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. She and Adam ate the fruit, and they were thus kicked out of the Garden of Eden, while also condemned to have limited lives. The Serpent was also punished, with his arms and legs gone and was forced to stay on the ground to eat dust.
According to our current scientific theories, life didn’t just exist before Adam and Eve. Human life existed long before that too. It started in Africa, then they migrated around the Indian Ocean, with some in Australia. Carbon dating even shown evidence that they existed before that.
All of this shows that Adam and Eve were not the first humans on Earth. I would also like to mention that in the Bible, early patriarchs lived as long as 900 years. But as each generation went down, lifespans have been decreasing, until it went down to 120 years as the maximum. Even to a healthy person, it’s not scientifically possible to live almost 1,000 years. If anything, lifespans have been increasing due to the advancements in medicine.
Helping Theories:
Human life may have existed before Adam and Eve, but if you looked at the Byzantine Calendar, we are currently in the year 7534. This means that Adam and Eve have existed around 5500 B.C., long before civilization began. This could prove that not only didn’t our current civilizations exist until after Adam and Eve, but it also prove that they didn’t exist until after the Biblical flood. So Adam and Eve may have not been the first humans on Earth, but they were the first civilized humans on Earth.
Let’s think of another event in history. Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean all had European settlements and colonization before the United States. So which country is the oldest country in the Americas? The answer is the United States. Not Canada, not Mexico, but the US. Why is this the case? Because the United States isn’t the first country formed by settlements. It was the first country to declare independence from Europe. If a country in the west didn’t become a country before declaring independence, then the United States would be the oldest, even if it wasn’t the first to have European settlements.
Using this analogy, we can see that Adam and Eve were the first humans on Earth. A human as defined isn’t just a homo sapien. It’s a civilized homo sapien. Civilization didn’t exist before them, so they don’t have any stories of the past to tell. But civilization existed long before Jesus, so he had a lot of stories of the past to tell.
Another person would ask, if God didn’t want them eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, why did he make such fruit? If you asked such question, I can tell that you support preventative measures. They may minimize costs and prevent further problems, but the downside of that is that you won’t learn personal responsibility. Personal responsibility is an important trait. So it’s possible that God created the fruit to teach Adam and Eve personal responsibility.
As for the longer lifespans of the past, there’s multiple theories on why they gotten shorter. Remember the Theory of Evolution? Some religious evolutionists believe that God directed evolution in plants and animals. He created the original creatures, then directed their evolutions over the years. This is how we have today’s life compared to the dinosaurs. Evolution can also explain how Noah was able to have all species of animals on the ark when there are far more species of animals, and how human life has shortened from 900 years to 120 years.
Noah’s Ark Flood:
Before the birth of Christ, the most important story would be the Biblical Flood, when God flooded the entire Earth, with the only people left were Noah and his family. Even the highest of the mountains were submerged, and every creature besides what Noah took on the ark were eliminated. The ark was large enough for both helpful animals and other animals. All of the evil that descended from Cain were gone. Once the flood receded, God has promised never to flood the Earth again. He created the rainbow and opals as part of the promise.
If one were to believe that the flood took place only in the late Cenozoic Era, the flood wouldn’t make any sense scientifically. There’s not enough water to fill the Earth all the way to Mount Everest. There’s also no scientific evidence or historical evidence that the flood occurred. However, many stories in history, including of other religions, had a story about a flood. Evidence states that the flood could’ve been a local one rather than a global one.
Here’s the problem. The theory of a global flood contradict science, and the theory of a local flood contradict the Bible.
- The strongest point that supports the global flood theory is that if the flood was local, then God has broken his promise many times. Because the Black Sea flood wasn’t the only flood that happened. Think of all the times the rivers have overfilled and grew into floods. Think of all the times hurricanes hit cities and left a storm surge. All of these were local floods. This would show that God has either broke his promise, or he never left a promise that he won’t do this again.
- The strongest point that supports the local flood theory is that if the flood was global, nearly every species would’ve gone extinct, making the Earth uninhabitable. There would be very few species left on the Earth, and it would’ve been impossible to populate the whole Earth with all these animals so fast.
Helping Theories:
This will be a hard one to prove, so I’m going to try my best.
In evidence that the flood was global, the water may have not come from the Earth, but rather from the supernatural. Today’s Earth may not have enough water to flood the Earth, but it could’ve come from God and kept it submerged for a few centuries. Once all the water receded, the water that God used to flood the Earth has not come back. It’s kinda like if an agent was hired to work for someone until their duties were fulfilled. Once the work was done, the agent leaves.
One would ask if the flood was supernatural, then why is there no scientific evidence that it happened? Here’s something I can tell you. If you went to the store to buy some ingredients to bake a cake, and you made the cake at home, you would leave evidence that a cake has been made. You then have delivered the cake to someone else, took all of the trash to the dumpster, and then cleaned the dishes. And then you earned another paycheck. All of this would erase the evidence that you made a cake.
God probably has flooded the Earth supernaturally, which affected everyone. But when the water receded, God also erased the evidence that it happened other than the fact that he created the rainbow.
Another thing that proves that the flood was global is the Theory of Evolution. Noah may have not save the species of animals that we know today, but he probably saved the ancestors of the animals. Their descendants have evolved into other species that we eventually know today.
In evidence that the flood was local, I will have to say that it’s not much about the event, but rather the future translations. The original Bible was written in Hebrew, which was later translated in Latin, and then multiple languages, with the Bible we know today coming from the King James Bible, which was written in Shakespearean English. They could’ve added the fact that it was global to add more drama, older words were mistranslated, or something else. Every event in the Bible took place in the Middle East. It’s not uncommon for old texts to be parochial. This was long before the European colonization of the world, and even longer before the age of the internet.
In the end, regardless of whether the flood was local or global, it is clear that there was a flood that wiped out all civilization in the Middle East, it killed all of Cain’s descendants, God has promised not to make such large flood again and there hasn’t been a region-wide flood since then, Noah took animals on the Ark, and it changed the land. It doesn’t matter if the flood was local or global. What matters was that the flood has happened.
The Exodus:
While this may not be the most important story when it comes to the life of Jesus, this was very important when talking about the history of Judaism. Because the Exodus explained how Judaism began. The Hebrews fled Canaan because there was a famine. But when they lived in Egypt, they were enslaved. And then, Moses led the Hebrews out of Egypt and into the promised land. Around that time, the Ten Commandments were written. These rules dictated both Christian life and Jewish life. One of the most notable stories regarding the Exodus was the Ten Plagues of Egypt, where the river turned into blood, pests took over Egypt, food was destroyed, and there were dark signs with the weather (the fiery hail and the three days of darkness). The Pharoah did not listen, so God had to deliver another plague. It got to the point that the Angel of Death came and killed all of the Egyptian firstborn sons.
While it’s the most popular story in the Bible among secularists, here’s the problem. Several people have denied the entire existence of the Exodus. They cite that there’s no historical evidence, and some of the plagues aren’t scientifically possible. Even in Egypt, they have no record that the Exodus happened. Even if it did, they still have proven that it didn’t happen when Rameses II (the most popular Pharoah in adaptations) was the Pharoah of Egypt.
Helping Theories:
I personally believe that the Exodus did happen, and exactly how it was said in the Bible (including the fact that the Nile River turned into blood rather than got polluted from another source). But to those who take evidence seriously, I will go ahead and explain.
From what I read from another source, in Ancient Egypt, it was common for a Pharoah to erase all history that happened under another Pharoah. As time goes on, history is written. But the Pharoah would try to destroy the evidence that another Pharoah ruled Egypt. If all evidence is erased, then the Pharoah that ruled Egypt at the time will be lost. It is likely that the Pharoah in the Bible was one of them. The reason why we know that he existed was because it was recorded in the ancient texts that became part of the Bible. It’s kinda like how some people try to erase evidence of their horrible actions and deny any wrongdoing, but some of the victims hold the evidence of the event in the future.
There’s multiple instances of people trying to erase evidence of history. It happened with the Holocaust when the Nazis tried to erase all evidence of their atrocious actions before the Soviets invaded Auschwitz. It happened with the statue of Buddha when the Taliban blew up the statue in 2001. Some of these acts were unintentional as well. For instance, when the Spanish took over the Aztecs and the Incas, they shipped their treasures to Spain, which basically destroys what archeological evidence that they had. Luckily, we could no longer do this. Real archeologists would be enraged to see if something like this happen. Their mission is to tie the past with the present, and any past and present acts of graverobbing or vandalism of archeological sites would hinder that.
Another helping theory proving the existence of the Exodus was that archeologists have found that some houses in Thebes, Egypt had four rooms, which is common among the Israelites a long time ago, but not among the Thebans. This would hint that either the Israelites or someone related to them would’ve built the houses in Egypt.
Lastly, if the Exodus didn’t happen, then Judaism wouldn’t have existed. Without Judaism, there will be no Christianity. We all know that Christianity has spread all across Europe, the very continent that took over the world from the 16th to 20th centuries. Someone could say that it started like a group and they made up some story about how it began. But if that were the case, then Judaism wouldn’t really have caught on.
Conclusion:
So as I wrap up today’s entry, I would like to say that although natural and human history wouldn’t have fully agreed with the Bible, the Bible isn’t wrong that many of the events didn’t happen. Ask about the resurrection of Jesus and if it was scientifically possible, one rule of science is not to rule out unusual cases. There are some things that science can’t explain either.
I will be honest. As time goes on, many things change. They include science, technology, culture, and society. They even supersede themselves. Newer technology has made older technology obsolete. Science has not just outdated old stories, but also itself. And whatever may have been acceptable a long time ago is no longer acceptable and vice versa. But if there’s one thing that doesn’t change, it’s art. We may have made new historical discoveries and scientific theories that contradict older facts, and this will continue for as long as we live. But the Bible and many other religious texts have stayed the same and cannot be altered. This means that even the Bible, which contained several stories from hundreds of years, was a product of its time.
More importantly, if you’re a Christian, it doesn’t matter when the world began or if the stories happened exactly how the Bible written it. What matter is that you believe in God, you believe that Jesus is the son of God, and you accept his sacrifice as your salvation. That’s the most important part about Christianity. It’s not about following the rules or believing in creation. It’s about following Jesus and accepting his death as your forgiveness. The fact he would forgive all sins as a key to Heaven explains why it’s the largest religion in the world. It wasn’t meant to be a local one, but rather a universal one. If you followed every rule in the Bible and believed in how the stories went, but you rejected God or refuse to repent, then you’re not a true Christian. You also can’t simply accept that he’s the son of God like it’s a fact and not a belief out of love. The question is neither “are you going to follow the rules?” or “do you believe that the chicken came before the egg?”. The question is “do you want to be with God and accept his forgiveness?”. This may sound dismissive of what today’s entry is about, but there’s more important things than believing how the world was made and believing if any of the stories happened.
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