Origin Essay Research Paper The first

Origin Essay, Research Paper

The first (?) and most popular ( ?) explanation is the big bang cosmology. The development of new and better tools for astronomical observation and Einstein s discovery of the theory of General Relativity sparked a revolution in this field in the early part of the 20th century. (Cite source) Now, we believe that the universe started as a primreview fireball that exploded about 15 billion years ago. It took time, observational evidence, and careful verification of predictions made by the Big Bang model to convince the scientific community to accept this hypothesis of cosmic genesis. Not only did the Big Bang model seem to give in to the Judeo-Christian idea of beginning of the world, but it also seemed to include an act of supernatural creation at some point. One of the fundamental rules of science is the impossibility of getting something from nothing. This rule appears to place the very moment of creation of the universe outside the realm of the scientific debate and force scientists to treat the existence of the universe as a given. (Cite source)

Not only it is difficult to figure out how the entire universe could appear from nothing, but there is also no plausible explanation for the mechanism of the (initial) explosion itself that springs to the mind. In trying to understand the origin of the universe, some puzzling paradoxes arise.

One of these discrepancies is the inability to imagine that the Big bang explosion brought about the existence of a universe with galaxies, stars, planets and life. One would ask how the big bang was so well engineered. Any other force would have meant either a universe with no structure or a universe collapsing back into itself after a brief existence. The second paradox deals with the large-scale properties of the universe. The extreme large-scale smoothness of the temperature and the density of matter cannot be explained by the standard Big Bang model. No known physical process can account for it. (Cite source)

Two opposite schools of thought have addressed the above paradoxes. The proponent of anthropic principle states that if the universe were not so fine-tuned, there could be no life in it, and we humans would not be there to witness it. Although this statement is correct, it does not attempt to resolve the paradoxes in terms of physical mechanism, but relegates them to the status of special initial conditions. The other school of thought has refused to accept special initial conditions but rather has searched for mechanisms that account for the observed peculiarities. This is the school of thought that the Big Bang cosmology falls under.

The Big Bang

When Einstein applied his newly created theory of general relativity to the universe, he discovered to his dismay that the universe was not static, as everybody including him would have liked to believe at that time. His universe was either contracting or expanding. Rather than exploring the consequence of his findings he created an artificially static universe, which he latter regretted, calling it the greatest blunder of his life. (Cite Source.) A decade later Hubble, using a newly built telescope, discovered that the universe was not only expanding but also accelerating. There are fossils that prove the happening of the Big bang theory, which include the abundant (relative abundance of) matter and the afterglow radiation.

The origin of life

The question of life and its origins has engaged the human mind since men first begun to contemplate the nature of their place on the earth and in the universe. The subject often elicits emotion because it concerns us, and because we do not have a complete scientific explanation of all the steps leading to life s origin (Judd 31) yet. It is hard to define what life is because life is so complex. The only closest? way to define it is by its characteristics.

Both the Bible and scientific study agree that at some time in the very distant past, life on earth did not exist. Our imagination balks at any attempt to picture how it could have gotten started. For this reason, the Christian view comes as something of a relief: God created life that is the only source of matter, so to speak (Wright 93). According to Genesis 1, an omnipotent God brought life by His act of creation. As it has already been stated. (”before” is redundant..), Genesis creation story does not provide a mechanism that the Creator used, and it is because of our curios minds that we want to find out how God has created. All the interpretations agree that one of the most important message of the Bible is to establish God as the creator. The universe is not eternal it had a beginning while God, instead, is. The Bible, at this point, presents a framework of seven days in which it concentrates the entire creation period. However the text of Genesis is poetical and therefore the seven-day framework is a product of poetry. Therefore, it can be concluded that the creation passage was not written to describe God s creating techniques, but to affirm His position as a creator.

A great deal of imaginative work has gone into construction of theories interpreting the six days of creation. Some of the major interpretations include: The reconstruction theory, which holds that God created an original perfect creation that, could have occurred in the ancient past. After creation a great catastrophe occurred and wiped out most of the structures of the earth. Then the six days of creation describes God s reconstruction of the structure and living things. The interpretation may be six literal days or a long time period. The problem with this view is that it postulates a catastrophe and assumes that elsewhere in the creation account, God was recreating. It also presumes a connection between the fall of Satan and cosmology. This theory tries to harmonize scripture with contemporary science, but there is no fossil record that shows that a single catastrophic destruction then reconstruction recreation of life structures occurred.

The second interpretation is the Day Age theory, which takes the genesis days figuratively as a long time period. The day may be distinct ages in series; or days may be overlapping ages or days may be literal days where each day is followed by an age that may overlap others. This theory has the purpose of harmonizing genesis one with geological and biological information .The people who believe in this theory believe that life developed by progressive creation. This theory has attractive features because it takes the bible and scientific data seriously and avoids the pitfalls of the literalism of special creation. The problem with this view is that it continually demands us to reshape and fit genesis to contemporary scientific explanations which make Biblical interpretation a servant of science, an undesirable and inappropriate relationship.

The third interpretation is the Literalist theory, which holds the view that the six days of creation are literal days in which God accomplished his creative work, after which he rested. Those who hold this view assumes that the major mode of God s creation was supernatural. Natural processes were suspended, and what occurred was outside the normal realm of cause and effect relationship over time. The text neither supports nor refutes this assumption. It appears to me that the main reason for this theory is to defend the Bible.

The last interpretation of the creation story of Genesis is the framework theory that looks at this story topically rather than chronologically. This theory postulates a thesis statement, poses a problem and explains how God solves it. This theory pictures God in relation to his creation. This fosters a compatible relationship between the Bible and science. This is in contrast with the difficulties of other interpretive theories because it conforms to the testimony of God s Word and God s world at the same time.

In trying to answer how life might have begun