Re: [asa] Light, waters, days of Genesis

Hi Paul,
  Some of my thoughts on your paper…
   
  I disagree that the moment of the Big Bang is included in Genesis. There are just too problems with this view, many which I, and others, have stated recently. It was popular and supported by the Catholic Church in the early days after Georges Lematre (Belgian priest with an MIT PhD in physics) proposed this theory. I don’t think they tie it too tightly to Genesis today, however.
   
  For me, there is no need for BBT in Genesis. The first important light for mankind came from our nourishing Sun.
   
  As for the explanation for the Earth being described as without form and void, I agree with your statements presented from Ross. [However, modern astronomy puts Earth’s formation at a much more refined date. 4.5 billion is about the age of the oldest meteorites.]
   
  These views that the Earth could meet this Genesis description of being without form and void by being within an accretion disk makes more sense today than ever. Accretion disk counts observed by the Spitzer telescope and others are in the hundreds.
   
  As for the “deep” polemic – just tell me if you really hate puns and I will attempt to do so--, what do you think of my answer? Rayleigh Scattering is hardly new science. I see no reason why an accretion disk would not look an almost unimaginably large blue ocean. All that is needed is enough illumination and particles smaller than about 400 nm. Stellar nurseries abound and the radioactive elements discovered strongly suggest that we were came from one of these which included at least one supernova. Big bright blue neighbors could easily provide the light.
   
  Further, the stars similar in mass to the Sun would also, likely, have accretion disks, too. Thus, waters above and below might be visible to our special God-held observer. This eliminates the need to find actual liquid water lying around prior to Earth’s formation. Liquid water can not stay liquid while in a vacuum and condensing, stellar-making clouds do not contain a majority of water in them in any form, ice or vapor.
   
  In the “Day 1” description, I am unaware of accretion disks glowing. They glow in the infrared band but not the visible band. [This is why the Spitzer and James Webb are IR telescopes. There is no visible light equivalent telescope for the Hubble going up, as far as I know, though it saddens me.] I also do not have the impression that our observer was completely surrounded with light. There are observations, however, that reveal protosuns can have dust shrouds blocking their light.
   
  I do not see any remote hint that in vs. 3-5 a solidified Earth exists. The author had just stated the Earth was without form and void, why suggest a change when light sprung forth. It seems superfluous to suggest the Earth was a solid body at this time. You have disagreed, too, thankfully.
   
  In the Day 2 review, I differ with Ross since no atmosphere is likely due to the fact the Earth was not established. Their earlier spin to solidify the Earth now becomes more clear, they have no reasonable explanation to offer for Day 2 without an atmosphere. Of course, I like mine better, at least for now. What do you think about it, knowing it is different than your view?
   
  Since the idea of clouds were presented in this section, allow me to add some thoughts about how the indirectly impact my opinion. Clouds are not wavelength sensitive. Condensed vapor forms particles larger than the wavelength of visible light. The light they scatter are defined under Mie Scattering equations. Essentially, the scattering is primarily forward and rearward of the original beam of light, and there is little to no variation in the net coloration of the scattered light. [BTW, care to guess why clouds look white?]
   
  Since the Earth was stated such that it implies it was in the accretion disk, it was puzzling why the author did not describe the disk as cloud-like rather than water. This is also true for the atmospheric idea, too. It was later that I realized Rayleigh Scattering, not Mie Scattering was the key. The disk would look blue, not white. It would appear as waters not clouds.
   
  As for Day 3 regarding the water polemic, my view seems to dispel the problem. Waters of day 2 only were described as such but they were really the material which helped form the planets. The Earth was too hot to have oceans originally, as you had pointed out earlier, but at some point, oceans did indeed form. This suggests our observer may not have seen a simple snap-shot of Earth, but rather a more time elapsed view. This would also have taken place on day 2 as the waters were separated, which would have taken eons using our current rate of time. God is, of course, not constrained by time. I have a drawing that says “God has time”. He takes time for us, and He owns it, too.
   
  I am unsure of this, but I think much of our oceans waters are from comets. Studies are underway which compare certain elements (eg hydrogen with a neutron) found in both ocean water and comets. This process would have been over a long period, though there was a span of time for heavy bombardments due to planetary resonance factors and, perhaps, stellar neighbors passing by. I don’t think it unfair to allow a time lapse view of creation in these cases that display our formation history.
   
  I’ll end here due to the length.
   
  GeorgeA

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Received on Tue Dec 4 23:24:01 2007