Glaring Biblical Errors in the Movie, “Genesis: Paradise Lost” part II

“[They Examined] the Scriptures daily to see if these Things were so.” (Acts 17:11)

In addition, the GPL insistence that the sun and the moon were not created until Day 4 entails a neglect of the difference in the Hebrew vocabulary employed on Day 4 as opposed to in 1:1.  While the latter uses the word bara, which means to create out of nothing, the three verbs (yehee, haya, asah) that are typically translated “made,” with respect to the “two lights” on Day 4, mean “to cause to appear,” which is a far weaker concept than is bara.  They are describing the transition from the heavy cloudy atmosphere that had obscured these lights during the early earth (1:2) and their later dissipation on Day 4 which allowed the same lights to become visible as distinct objects.  See my paper, “Genesis 1:1-2 Anticipates Big Bang Cosmology.”

 

2.       GPL is wrong to suggest (repeatedly) that the BB is atheistic.  It is, to the contrary, a matter of record that when the BB first came to be acknowledged as the correct accounting for the existence of the cosmos, it was atheists who were its most vocal opponents because they understood that a cosmos with a beginning from nothing necessitates a transcendent creator to bring it into existence.  Stephen Hawking to this day seeks to evade the BB for the same reason.  Yet it is illogical for anyone to suggest that the BB can be the ultimate cause of existence.  Although scientists hold that the universe has been expanding since its beginning from a BB, many Christians also believe the same.  Yet we do not regard the BB as the cause of that beginning, but instead, only as an effect from the actual Causer of all existence who is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and us too!  As Scripture declares, “By faith we understand that the whole created order was fashioned by the command of God so that the things we see were brought into existence not from that which appears” (Hebrews 11:3).  It is both scientifically and conceptually impossible for absolute nothingness to bring anything into existence.  See my paper, “Was the Big Bang the Big Beginning?”

3.        When GPL asserts that only God is able to have witnessed the creation event, it is betraying an ignorance of the scientific basis for holding that the BB correctly describes the beginning and development of the universe.  The grounds for the nearly-unanimous scientific adherence to the BB (despite the problem it poses to atheism) are not secret!  While it is of course true that no human being was alive at the beginning of creation, even so, scientists have the means to look back across the history of the universe for the reason that light-travel duration gives them the ability to observe every stage of its expansion virtually all the way back to its beginning.  Indeed, every time we observe any heavenly body, including our moon (its reflected light takes 3 seconds to reach our eyes), we are looking back into the past.  Through advanced “optical” instruments scientists are being increasingly equipped to confirm that the universe arose from a singularity and has been expanding ever since.  Furthermore, this data refutes the GPL assertion that the BB isn’t testable.  Every scientist who is open to every aspect of the observational evidence without prejudice, and so chooses to investigate it, will reach the same conclusion.   See my rebuttal of two Lutheran Witness articles, “When Science Meets the Church,” p. 3.

Indeed it is disappointing that YECs reject the huge body of evidence supporting the BB since these indications constitute the clearest and most powerful scientific verification of all that the cause of all material existence can only be the God of the Holy Bible.