From Newsgroup: uk.religion.christian

Unlike the creation myths of other cultures, the events of Creation Week
as described in Genesis are entirely in accord with our scientific
knowledge.

God bless,
Kendall K. Down

Without Form and Void
=====================
To sum up, then. I believe that the universe came into existence by
God's creative power, but instead of a Big Bang followed by an
unbelievable Inflation, I hold that God created the universe with all
its galaxies scattered across space and moving at the speeds God
assigned to them. This instant of creation was longer than 6,000 years
ago, but as we don't have to imagine all the galaxies coming back into
one spot of infinite density, we need not adopt the calculation that the
Big Bang happend 13.79 billion years ago.

Nor do we need to believe that stars form as clouds of gas gradually collapsing under the force of gravity. God was quite capable of forming Belegeuse in much the same condition as it is today, but bearing signs
of great age as we theorise the process of star formation.

So we can imagine the God created a solar system with eight planets (and
a dwarf planet) circling around a large body that had not yet sparked
into life. In the darkness of space all those planets were cold; some of
them were covered with thick layers of frozen methane while the four
nearest the sun were bare and rocky. One of the planets, however, had a copious quantity of water and was covered with water ice.

However this planet also had plentiful deposits of radio-active
chemicals deep in its interior, so although the surface was frozen, only
a short distance below the surface the water was still liquid and the
ground, while not "warm", was not frozen hard.

Scientists have found evidence for this stage of Earth's history and
refer to it as "Snowball Earth". Opinions vary as to whether there was
any open water or how thick the layer of ice was, but we can imagine
most of the surface of the planet as similar to the Arctic, with ice
floes driven against each other by the wind and forcing each other up
into pressure ridges.

There were several unique features about this planet. The first was the
wind, for this planet had a thick atmosphere that contained a high
proportion of oxygen. In its earlier history the planet's atmosphere had
been short of oxygen and any which appeared was quickly locked away by reacting with iron to produce banded iron formations. Scientists claim
that about 3.5 billion years ago cyanobacteria evolved which developed photosynthesis to produce oxygen and over the next billion years all the
free iron was oxidised and that allowed oxygen to accumulate in the atmosphere.

There are, however, natural chemical processes which can produce oxygen.
Water photodissociation occurs high in the atmosphere when ultraviolet
light breaks apart water vapour and carbon dioxide. I have suggested,
however, that the sun was not yet "alight", so this process was probably
not important. Down on the Earth's surface, however, we have radiolysis
of water, when cosmic rays or radiation from uranium and other
radio-active elements splits water into hydrogen and oxygen. Compared
with the amount of oxygen produced by living organisms, these and
similar processes only make a minor contribution, but to quote our evolutionary friends, a lot can happen in four billion years, especially
if there was not as much free iron as has been hypothesised and the
banded iron formations had some other cause!

The second unique feature about this planet was the presence of water.
It is worth quoting at length to show what a problem this is for the evolutionist.

"We need to go back more than 4.6 billion years. The young sun is
shining and encircling it is a maelstrom of gas and dust that will clump
into the planets. Any water exists as ice in interstellar space. If any
of that ice found itself in the inner part of the solar syatem, where
the rocky planets like Earth will form, the heat and radiation split it
into its constituent atoms of hydrogen and oxygen. This means the
material that formed Earth shouldnrCOt have contained a speck of moisture!

"LetrCOs imagine that, somehow, interstellar water did survive the
tumultuous star forming process to condense into oceans on EarthrCOs
surface. It would then have the small matter of the impact that formed
the moon to contend with. The scientific consensus is that the impact
was so epic that it vaporised our planet. Some of that cloud of gas
coalesced into the moon and some of it collapsed under its own gravity
to remake Earth. The conventional view was that water couldn't have
survived this!"
New Scientist 03-11-2018 p. 39

In desperation scientists suggest that earth's water accumulated - don't forget those billions of years - as it was struck by icy comets and meteorites.

"A strong blow to the idea that cosmic missiles delivered our water came
from the Rosetta probe, which visited comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in
2014 and found it had the "wrong type of water"! For decades astronomers
have been hunting for a comet or asteroid that contains the right type
of water together with the right mix of other elements we know were
delivered in the late veneer. So far, nothing fits. That brings us to an impasse. Our story so far says that water shouldn't have been present
when Earth formed. It shouldn't have survived the moon-forming impact.
And it seems our water can't have been delivered by any comet or
asteroid we know of.

"This brings us to the surprising conclusion that our planet's water
isn't just older than the moon. It must have come from interstellar
space, which means it is older than the sun itself! It is hard to fathom
how it survived entry into the solar system, but once you have
eliminated the impossible, it forces you to this conclusion."
New Scientist 03-11-2018 p. 40

Of course, once you have eliminated the nonsensical idea that there were
vast quantities of water floating around in space which somehow all got funnelled down onto the earth, bypasing Mars and the other planets, you
might be forced to the conclusion that God created Planet Earth,
complete with all the water it needs. Sherlock Holmes would be proud of
your deductive powers!


"Let there be Light"
====================

It has always been a bit of a puzzle for me why God created light on the
first day of Creation week, but did not create the sun until day four.
In addition, God created light and then, for twenty-four hours,
apparently did nothing else. Indeed you might even say that He did very
little for forty-eight hours.

Theologians have gone into mystical raptures about the "glory of God's presence", but if we attribute this light to God's presence, that could
hardly be said to be creating light! God's glory is, presumably, an
essential attribute of His presence, so if the work of creation required
Him to be physically close to Earth, the light would come with Him. Non-theologians, I suspect, think more in terms of turning on a light in
a dark room before you set to work, without stopping to think how odd
for God to turn on the light and then do nothing!

It seems obvious to me that the light of the first day was somehow
different from the light of the sun, otherwise it would have made sense
for God to create the sun on day one rather than four days later. So
what are the attributes of light? In what way or ways might the
miraculous light of day one have differed from the light of the sun on
day four?

Light, obviously, provides illumination. It provides colour; and it
provides heat. There are certain creatures, such as fireflies, which are
able to produce cold light by chemical means, but other forms of light
are always accompanied by heat, whether we are talking about a candle or
a bonfire or an electric light bulb. Even fluorescent tubes and LEDs
produce heat, though much less heat than the bulb invented by Sir Joseph
Swan in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and later reinvented by the American Thomas Edison.

I have already suggested that in the darkness before Creation Week,
planet Earth was cold and covered with ice. Before God can do anything
He needs to remove the ice and warm the planet, otherwise the plants and animals He creates will promptly freeze to death! It is not unreasonable
to think that the mysterious light produced as God's first creative act
might have that purpose - it was light that provided heat.

In which case I think we can go a step further and determine the colour
of the light!

I have been in churches and other buildings which are heated by
infra-red heaters that are situated high on the walls, which do not heat
up the air (or at least, don't heat it by much) but which heat anything
solid that is struck by the infra-red rays. Certainly if God was using
light to transmit heat, that light would have to be at the infra-red end
of the spectrum. Blue light wouldn't do it and white light would only
heat by its longer wave-lengths.

So let us imagine that when God said, "Let there be light", a source of intense infra-red sprang into existence. It would have to be a fair
distance out in space for the light to reach every part of the globe, so
let us further imagine that this light source is at least half-way
between Earth and the sun. Or, of course, it might even be the sun
itself, for we do not know what kind of light might be produced by a
ball of gas as its nuclear furnace sputtered into life.

We are told that "there was evening, there was morning". That is
evidence of two things: first, that the light was not all-encompassing
but was from a source that had a physical location. Second, that the
globe was turning on its axis and every point on the planet was exposed
to this intense red light, which dimmed as it passed through the
atmosphere in morning and evening, and was at its fullest strength at
mid-day on each line of longitude.

Perhaps we can imagine the ice cracking and its surface steaming as the
full force of of the infra-red light reaches it. The heat lessens as the planet turns and the light passes through increasingly thick layers of
the atmosphere until eventually the light sinks below the horizon and it
is evening and then night.

But if the intense heat of our infra-red light has warmed and melted the surface of the icy planet, that warming will continue throughout the
night. The surface will cool, of course, but its heat will percolate
down into deeper layers, warming and melting them ready for further heat
when the source of light once more appears above the horizon.


The Firmament
=============
Twelve hours of darkness slide slowly into the past and then there is a
glow in the east and a moment later the intense red light appears above
the horizon. Once more heat pours down onto the frozen planet and the
thick ice floes that once covered the sea are now mushy and soft. Steam
rises up from them, but even more, invisible water vapour rises high up
into the sky.

Wisps of cloud form but burn away under the fierce supernatural heat and
the water vapour continues to rise. Whitcomb and Morris claim that high
above the earth there is a layer in the atmosphere which holds a huge
quantity of water. They further postulate that this water was the source
of the water in Noah's Flood. We now believe that 90% of atmospheric
water is within the lower part of the Troposphere, the layer which
extends up to 7.5 miles above the earth.

As the atmosphere thickened due to the presence of water, so the amount
of harmful ultra-violet reaching the earth's surface was reduced. In
addition, the effect of earth's rotation on the air began to be felt and
the first stirrings of weather systems began as air and water vapour
rose from the equatorial regions and began to move, slowly at first but
with increasing speed, towards the cooler polar regions, where it sank
down and spread out back towards the south.

In another sign of the changing atmosphere, as night fell the stars
began to twinkle as their light shone down through the water vapour.

As the source of light and heat sank down into the west, there were
large stretches of ice-free water, especially around the equator, but as
an indication of just how much water had been evaporated, there were
areas where the waves on the sea broke and surged, suggesting that the
sea was shallower in those places.

But it wasn't just evaporation. Geologists tell us that Britain is
tilting like a see-saw as the huge weight of the glaciers that once
covered the island has been removed. The north of Britain is rising
while the south is sinking, one of the reasons why London is threatened
by ever higher tides. The same phenomenon can be traced in other areas
which were once covered by glaciers whose weight caused the land to
sink. Now it is rising in a "rebound" response to the disappearance of
all that ice.

The glaciers that once covered Britain are long gone and the remaining
earth movements are very slow. If the ice had been removed rapidly
thanks to a supernatural light, it is not unreasonable to think that the
earth movements might have been correspondingly rapid.


Dry Land
========
As the light rose in the east for the third time, an observer - if there
had been one - would have noticed that the heat was considerably less
and growing less by the minute. Was this because God was withdrawing His miraculous light or might there be a physical reason?

Let us suppose that there had been a proto-planet or a cloud of gas or something, which had exploded into light and heat fairly close to our
planet. For two days the heat had played on the Earth's surface but now
the gravity of the sun was starting to take effect and this heavenly
body was being attracted away from Earth and towards the sun. Light -
and possibly the heat it carries - obeys what is called the Inverse
Square Law. If you double the distance, the intensity of the light
decreases by a factor of four!

At first, so great has been the intensity of the heat, any change has
been barely noticeable, but now by the third day, not only is the
distance increased so much that the decrease is marked and, we may
suggest, as the source of this light gets nearer the sun the force of
gravity affects it more, so that the speed at which it leaves the
vicinity of Earth increases.

Now the evaporation of all that water and the melting of all that ice
results in land appearing above the surface of the sea - not just an
isolated reef here and there but a whole massive continent. According to
the geologists, at one time all our present continents were joined in
one super-continent that is commonly called Pangea. They point out that
the bulge of Africa's west coast could fit neatly into the space between
North and South America that now makes up the Caribbean. They even claim
to have found similar rocks on both sides of the Atlantic!

It is not impossible that this is the origin of John's comment that in
the New Earth "there was no more sea" - that is, the land was no longer divided by seas and oceans. The entire habitable earth was one mass, surrounded by a vast expanse of sea.

As the land rises up, however, huge quantities of water cascade off it.
The land is soft and not held together by vegetation, so the water
rapidly cuts deep V-shaped valleys. though any steep cliffs disappear as
their sides slump down into the valleys. The whole Earth is a series of
gentle slopes and pleasant valleys.

But now God speaks and a mist of greenness begins to spread over the
land. Just as the light was miraculous, even though its effects were
entirely natural, so the emergence of plants is miraculous as seeds
sprout and shoot up with an entirely unnatural rapidity. Soon the whole surface of the earth is covered with plants - grass in many places, but
in other places the plants rise up higher and develop branches and grow
into trees. Some are tall or broad and seem to have no other function
than to provide shade, but others rapidly bloom and then fruits develop
and the branches droop under the weight of ripening apples and pears and cherries.

Meanwhile something remarkable is happening. As the trees grow taller
water vapour transpires from their leaves, is caught up by the breeze
and some miles further inland it falls as rain, watering more trees,
from which more vapour transpires to be carried even further inland by
the convection currents of air that are caused by the rain and vapour.
Thus the life-giving rain is carried inland to the furthest reaches of
Pangea.

This cycle of transpiration giving rise to the wind which carries the
water vapour further inland to water more distant forests has only
recently been recognised. It is how there is sufficient rain in the
furthest reaches of the Amazon Basin to give rise to the mighty Amazon
river! The source of this rain has long puzzled scientists, who expected
that the Andes would cause the headwaters of the Amazon to be in
rain-shadow and starved of water, but in fact the Amazon jungles have
created their own climate. It is believed that the cycle of
transpiration and precipitation is repeated up to seven times in the
Amazon basin between the Atlantic and the Andes, depositing an estimated twelve million million tonns of water in the form of rain.

Some may object that there was no rain before the Flood. The Bible's
statement that there was no rain can be interpreted as referring only to
the Garden of Eden, but the process of transpiration and precipitation
could also refer to the heavy mists which provide water in so-called
"cloud forests". Rain as we know it today requires condensation nuclei
in the upper atmosphere such as dust, salt or smoke. It could be argued
that in the newly created Earth there was no dust in the atmosphere,
certainly no smoke and, unless there were storms over the sea, no salt!

At present cloud forests only appear where moisture-laden air is forced upwards by mountains, where it cools and is deposited on plants as heavy
dew. We do not have any information about the topography of Eden, which
makes speculation about its water cycle fairly useless.


Lights
======
Let us suppose for a moment that Earth and the other planets of the
Solar System had been wandering in space and then God suddenly creates
the sun. Abruptly the sun's huge gravity reaches out and pulls Earth
into orbit around itself. What effect would that have had? Perhaps the
change in the planet's path would have been so small that there were no effects whatsoever, but I suspect that there would have been a few
earthquakes and jolts as the planet took up its new path.

We might expect even more earthquakes if the moon had been suddenly
created on this fourth day. Although we do not feel it, the earth itself flexes as the moon passes overhead. A rise of between 8-16 inches is
normal, though there are some places where the ground rises up to 20
inches. We are used to this and more importantly, the ground is used to
it, but if such movements were to start suddenly we would probably see a
maze of shallow cracks over the Earth's surface.

I think it far more likely that the moon and its gravity had been
present from creation, and likewise with the sun. It had always been at
the centre of the Solar System, but it had been dark or at most dimly
glowing as it gradually warmed up as its gravity compressed the cloud of
gas from which it formed. Now, on the fourth day, the sun comes to life.

Of course that may have been the result of God's creative power, but
what if that huge source of light and heat which had been warming the
earth now crashed into the sun. Might that have been the final addition
to its mass which started the nuclear reactions which give the sun its
light and heat today?

Instead of the fierce heat of the miraculous light source, the planet is bathed in the gentle warmth of the sun and the newly created plants
reach out towards it and photosynthesis begins. Under the sun's rays
apples ripen and turn red, sunflowers turn their stalks and open their
petals and seeds harden. Water vapour turns into clouds, whose patterns
drift across the sky giving beauty to the firmament.

There was another result of the sun's rays lighting up our Earth. Before
the sun burst into life the moon had been invisible, a dark satellite
circling a dark planet. Now, on the fourth day, the moon became visible, giving a gentle light to the night. The moon orbits Earth in 27.3 days
and Earth's shadow passes across its face, causing the moon to appear partially shaded. Due to the movement of the Earth around the sun, it
takes 29.5 days between one full, shadowless moon and the next. The moon
is thus a celestial time-keeper. The sun measures out our days and years
and the moon measures months - 12.4 months every year.

As a postscript Moses adds the information that God also made all the
stars which spangle the sky.


Great whales
============
It is with the Fifth Day that we depart from any possible physical
processes - even speeded up ones - as fish and aquatic creatures of all
kind are created. However with our modern knowledge we can appreciate
the wisdom of populating the waters before land animals appear.

We know that shellfish of all kinds perform a vital function in
filtering the water in which they live, as also do corals and many other creatures. Without them the seas and lakes would become turgid and
stagnant. But we are only just beginning to understand the complexity of
life in the sea. For example, it has recently been suggested that whale
faeces plays a vital part in fertilising the oceans, encouraging the
growth of plankton which in turn provide food for fish which ultimately
are food for whales!

Which brings me to the interesting question of how all these sea
creatures were fed?

Most Christians, I think, will naturally assume that there was no death
in Eden just as there will be no death in the New Earth. One writer even
went into rhapsodies over the flowers in heaven that will never fade.

I can remember my first spring in Britain and seeing a faint haze of
green on the willow trees which, on inspection, turned out to be new
leaves emerging after the winter. They were followed by a wave of pink
and white as cherry and apple trees burst into blossom. My wife and I
were enchanted by the drifts of pink petals that filled the roadside
gutters and saddened when they withered to brown and disappeared. For a
time we were tempted to follow the writer referred to above and long for heaven where the flowers never fade, but then we discovered that where
the flowers had been, tiny fruit was starting to appear and eventually
grew into glowing red apples or bunches of succulent cherries. Had the
flowers never fallen, the fruit could not have grown!

Another aspect of spring was the emergence of cattle into the fields
after being in a barn all winter. You could feel their joy as the cows
munched their way across the pasture, tearing off and masticating great mouthfuls of fresh green grass. But not once did I see a cow blow on the
grass or shake it vigorously in case there was an ant or other insect
clinging to the blades of grass! I doubt that the cows in Eden were any
more scrupulous than cows today.

But we need not look so far afield to find death. Our own bodies depend
upon death! Our skin is protected by an outer layer of dead skin cells
which is constantly renewed as cells in the lower layer of our skin die
and take their place. We grasp a door knob and leave behind the dead
cells worn off our body by friction - to say nothing of the friction as
our clothes rub against our skin and wear away dead cells. In fact, 10%
or more of household dust is made up of discarded skin cells, from
ourselves and any pets we may have. Inside our bodies, blood cells are constantly damaged by knocking against each other and the walls of our
blood vessels. Every second thousands die and are broken up by the liver
so that their constituents can be reused to make new blood cells. It is estimated that in seven years every cell in our bodies will have died
and been replaced (though that probably doesn't include brain cells).

We may view with equanimity the death of cells inside our bodies, but
what about cells outside our bodies - bacteria and protozoa? And while
we may be complacent about the death of multi-cellular things so long as
they are plants, what about mayflies? In our modern world they emerge
from a pupal state, swarm for a few brief hours and then fall back into
the river or pond from which they emerged, to become food for fish. Did
Eden have immortal mayflies - and if so, what did the fish eat?

So it seems to me that death, by the very nature of things, had to be
present in the newly created world. The grass died as it was eaten by
the cows, the flowers died so that the fruit could grow, and there were
even accidental deaths as elephants trod on beetles or caterpillars or
deer grazed in Eden's meadows. Our own bodies are cycles of death and reconstruction. To claim otherwise is to turn Eden into a Victorian
romantic fantasy, not a world inhabited by real flesh and blood animals!

If we turn to the seas, there are certainly sea creatures capable of a vegetarian diet, grazing on kelp or other seaweeds, but equally
certainly there are others for whom this would be impossible. Baleen
whales, for example, which strain vast mouthfuls of sea water to extract copepods, plankton and krill, but also small fish such as sardines which happen to be caught in the baleen plates. If whales ate fish in Eden,
why could not otters, dolphins and tuna do the same?

The question is, how far up the food chain did death extend?

Most of us wouldn't think twice about uprooting and killing a plant,
just so that we can eat the swollen orange root - the carrot. Just
because beetles can move faster than carrots does not mean that they
were not created to be food, for birds if not for us! Both beetles and
carrots are living creatures, both are capable of sensing danger and responding in their own ways. The beetle scurries away, the carrot
produces chemicals that defend itself against harmful fungii or bacteria.

The Bible tells us that in the New Earth the lion will eat straw like
the ox and it is probable that the same was true in Eden. On that
extremely tenuous basis I would like to suggest that mammals were exempt
from death - and the reason was because they were capable of forming a relationship with man - becoming pets, in other words. Fish or
earthworms may become used to being fed at certain times or associating
a certain shape with the appearance of food in the fish tank, but I
gravely doubt that they can form emotional attachments with human beings.

But perhaps I'm being a bit "mammalist" here. Recent research is showing
that a wide variety of creatures have personalities and intelligence
which might qualify them to be exempt from death. Ravens are
exceptionally intelligent birds and among non-mammaliam sea creatures
the octopus has remarkable intelligence.


The Living Creature
===================
The ancients lacked the complex classification systems that we have
today. To them the world was divided up into three broad categories:
things which don't move - rocks and soil; things which are alive -
plants; and things which breathe. The Hebrew word for "breath" is
"nephesh", a word which is often translated as "soul", but which implies nothing more than that the possessor breathes air.

Of course, with our modern science, we know that plants, fish and birds breathe just as much as animals, but the Bible uses the ancient classifications. In Genesis 1:24, where the KJV has God declaring, "Let
the earth bring forth the living creature", the Hebrew actually says,
"Let the earth bring forth the living nephesh." On the Sixth Day,
therefore, God created everything which breathes - and animals have
nephesh as much as humans do.

This raises eyebrows among some, because the fossil record shows
creatures which at first sight seem difficult to reconcile with the
idyllic conditions of Eden. Even if we can imagine lions eating straw -
after all, cats love catnip - what did sabre-toothed tigers eat? Surely
they were intended to kill and eat other animals?

My not entirely serious reply is that God intended for sabre-toothed
tigers to eat sago. Those over-sized canine teeth would be ideal for
stripping away the outer layer of the sago palm to reveal the nutritious
pulp beneath, which would be extracted by the rough tongue of the tiger.

I say "not entirely serious", because we simply do not know what
sabre-toothed tigers were intended to eat. It is not impossible that
while its intended diet was sago, once sin and suffering entered the
world the sabre-toothed tiger began to put its teeth to an entirely
different use. Or, of course, it might have evolved.

Some may think that a curious term to use in a book devoted to
Creationism, but the fact is that God built adaptability into His
creation. Just as the original wolf has diversified into a wide range of
dogs, from dachshunds to great danes, so the original tiger may have diversified into a range of felines, among which were the sabre-toothed variety.

It may be objected that evolution requires death - "nature red in tooth
and claw" - and that is incompatible with a God of love. In fact,
evolution does not require death, merely reproduction. A dog breeder
produces a dog with certain desired characteristics, not by killing but
by reproducing! A bear with a thicker coat will happily stay in the snow
and ice of the Arctic while its less warmly clad cousins will head south
when winter comes - but neither needs to die for that to be so. And a
male and female bear, both with thicker coats, will meet and breed and
their offspring will, perhpas, have even thicker fur!

So on the Sixth Day God created what some have called "Genesis kinds" -
a pair of bears, a pair of dogs, a pair of giraffes - and over the years
those had offspring which spread out from Eden, adapting to the
different conditions that they found as they went. The camels found that
they could cope with drier climates and settled down there while the
deer moved elsewhere in search of lusher pastures.

We simply do not know whether God created animals all around the globe -
or all across Pangea - or whether He created a few in Eden and let them
spread out from there. Or possibly it was a combination of the two - a
nucleus of animals suitable for each geographical or climatic area which
then reproduced until an ideal population density was reached.

Which raises the question of what would happen when that density had
been achieved? Clearly if certain creatures were intended as food, they
would need to keep reproducing, but if others - including man - were
exempt from death, the only solution would be for them to stop
reproducing. We might imagine mankind having the self-control to abstain
from sex when God told him to, but not animals. So either God would
reduce the sexual urge to nothing or He would introduce some factor - a
new food, perhaps? - that would act as a contraceptive.

It is interesting to speculate that perhaps one of the reasons why there
is no marriage in heaven - or, presumably, the New Earth - is because
the ideal population density will have been achieved.


Let us make Man
===============
The final act in Creation Week was for God to make man. According to Scripture, God made man "of the dust of the ground", which many have interpreted to mean that God made a mud-pie model of a man and then
breathed life into it.

That would be a fairly pointless exercise because, unlike a marble
statue, man is made up of countless organs - heart, lungs, liver,
digestive system and so on. Are we to picture God modelling every organ
of Adam's body before bringing him to life? And to what level of detail
must we imagine God going - if the heart, was it complete with mud
valves and mud coronary arteries? What about the cells which make up our bodies? What about the gut flora which, we are told, are vital to our
health?

For a long time after I rejected the idea of God making mud pies I just assumed that the real meaning is that God made man of the common
elements of the Earth. As the author Douglas Adams remarked, we are "carbon-based life forms". We are not made of rare elements from Mars or exotic ingredients from Betelgeuse.

However, just recently I re-read Enima Elish, the Babylonian Creation
Myth with which I began this book, and have suddenly realised the
significance of Moses' statement. As you may recall, Marduk created man
from the blood of the slain demi-god Qingu. Had Moses introduced some
such element into his creation story, we today could very well reject
the story as nonsense. In fact, Moses' statement is entirely in accord
with science - we humans are indeed made "from the dust of the ground"
and the God of Genesis created men, not from the body or blood of a
slain god, but from the ordinary elements of earth.

Having made man's body, God then "breathed into him the breath of life".
Jesus usually performed His miracles on one "go" - he spoke and the
blind saw, the deaf heard and the lame walked. On a couple of occasions, however, He did the miracle in slow-motion, so to speak.

A blind man was brought to him, Jesus touched him and he saw - but
couldn't comprehend what he was seeing. Were all these things
surrounding him men or trees? All their jostling and their gesticulating hands, was that we call "walking?" In other words Jesus had healed his
optic nerve, but his brain still lacked the software to interpret all
these shapes and colours and recognise them for what they were.

We are told that God spoke the fishes, birds and animals into existence,
but when it comes of man, we are given a slow-motion account of man's creation. The body is created, but it lies there, cold and unmoving. Not
a single cell is active, the flagellae are still, the mitochondria do
nothing - and then God breathes life into that body and the heart begins
to beat, the bone marrow begins to form new blood cells, the stomach
begins to secrete acid, and the nerves and neurons in the brain spark
into life and tiny electric currents begin to surge as Adam's eyes open
and he sees God.

"Man became a living soul", or "nephesh". I have already mentioned the primitive classification system used by the ancients. Nephesh simply
implies that man belongs to the group of breathers. While it is true
that the word can be used as a synonym for a person - Jacob was
accompanied by seventy souls (nephesh) when he entered Egypt - its
primary emphasis is on man as a breathing creature. The nephesh which
sins shall die, Ezekiel tells us; in other words he will cease to breath.

There is another Hebrew word which can also be translated as "wind" or "breath", but which seems to come closer to what many people think of as "soul" and that is "ruach", often translated as "spirit". Whether it is correct to say that "ruach" is the rational part of man, the personality
or character, I am not Hebrew scholar enough to know, but I suspect it.

In any case, note that the source of this "nephesh" was God Himself. God
did not take a pre-existing "nephesh" from somewhere and put it into
man. Man "became" the living "nephesh". In other words, the "nephesh" is inextricably linked with the living body. Without both together, man
does not exist. Take away one or the other and you do not have man
liberated from the confines of the body, you have nothing! This does not appear to be true of the "ruach", for we are told that at death, the
"ruach" returns to God. (Ecclesiastes 12:7)

When Adam stood up, he could balance on his two feet and walk - but the software which enables a baby to do that takes eighteen months to
develop! Adam could talk with God - and the software which enables
speech and hearing takes two years to develop. A little later on he
became aware of his lack of a partner - and the feelings and emotions of loneliness belong to the late teen years.

In other words, at the instant of creation, Adam had an apparent age of
18-20! To the perennial question of which came first, the chicken or the
egg, the Creationist can answer, the chicken!

Almost immediately Adam's language skills were put to the test, for God paraded animals before him and Adam had the chance to name them. One
wonders why this was important, but a possible reason was because man
was to bear rule over the animals - and even in paradise, human nature
might lead Adam to regard the animals as slaves, as less than himself
and therefore creatures to be exploited. By naming them, they became
"real". One of the first things oppressive regimes do to strip prisoners
of their humanity is to take away their names and reduce them to
numbers. The Nazis would tattoo numbers onto the skin of concentration
camp inmates. It might be too much to say that Adam was
anthropomorphising the animals of Eden, but now that they had names,
they were no longer faceless creatures, but friends.

Then God planted a garden. Presumably the whole earth was covered with a profusion of vegetation after the third day, so this garden was somehow different from the rest of the world. It was planned and laid out in a
special way, but we are given no details of what distinguished it from
the surrounding world. All we are told is that Adam was placed in this
garden "to dress it and to keep it".

I imagine that one of Adam's tasks was to weed the garden, a thought
which may horrify some people, but a weed is simply a plant in the wrong place. In Kent I saw fields of wheat with patches of bright scarlet in
them - beautiful poppies; but of course, to the farmer poppies were
weeds! In a bed of poppies, however, an errant head of wheat would be
the weed!

That implies that the Garden of Eden was of limited extent, for one man
on his own could not keep a world weeded! Thus the command to "Be
fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it". Adam's
children would move away from their father's Eden and establish Edens of
their own, differing by plant types and vegetation, for what grows in a temperate climate will not necessarily flourish in the tropics. Thus God could, eventually visit the earth and stroll among its horticultural
beauties and find pleasure conversing with the different gardeners,
perhaps sharing ideas for how that piece of land could be developed or
which plants would look good in that particular spot.

In this work, man was to be aided by the creatures God had created.
Unlike modern farmers where animals are harnessed and driven to do man's bidding, I picture Eden as a place of play. If Adam wanted a bit of
ground cleared he would find some elephants and induce them to play a
game called "Knocking down a few trees". If he needed a hole dug in a particular spot he might tickle a badger and play with it a game called "Digging a hole here". Monkeys might join in a game of "Pick that
inaccessible fruit" while giraffes could play a game of "Trim the leaves
off that tall bush".
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