What God created in 7 days. Bible

I The Creation of the World The world, considered in its external beauty and internal harmony, is a marvelous creation, amazing with the harmony of its parts and the wonderful variety of its forms. In all its immensity it moves correctly like the majestic

The science of creation: how old is the Earth according to biblical texts? What evidence is there for the correctness of the Christian belief in the creation of the world? All about this in our material!

Creation Science

It says here that initially a single world ocean that covered the entire earth broke up into separate basins separated by land. The appearance of continents and seas on the face of the Earth was of utmost importance in the history of the development of our planet, but it happened in such a distant past that no traces of this event remained in the geological record.

In modern science, the question of the origin of the hydrosphere, as well as the atmosphere, is the subject of mutually exclusive hypotheses, which are based not on direct geological data, but on certain cosmogonic constructions and general views on the origin of the Earth. For the geologically foreseeable time, there is no data that would allow for a noticeable increase in the volume of the hydrosphere, which was noted by V.I. Vernadsky. If this position is correct, then it should be assumed that land appeared only as a result of a long process of geological development of our planet, expressed in the differentiation of its solid shells into oceanic depressions that contained the bulk of surface water. Thus, modern scientific data do not contradict the picture painted by the book of Genesis, but one has to be surprised, if one denies its divine inspiration, that a writer of a people who hardly saw the sea attached such great importance to its watery shell in the development of the Earth.

Bible and geology

We do not consider questions about the causes of the origin of oceans and continents, mountains and plains in this essay, since none of them contradicts the Bible. Something else is important for us now - a comparative analysis of the sequence of creations according to the Bible and the sequence of the appearance of various types of the material world in the light of modern scientific and natural knowledge.

These verses say that inanimate nature, at the command of God, produced living nature in the form of plants, which thus came into existence before animals. So, already at the relatively early stages of the development of the Earth, the plant world reached significant diversity and developed not only in water, but also covered the land.

There are no traces left of the very first stages of life in the geological record, so we have to limit ourselves to only general considerations and guesses. It is generally accepted that life arose in the oceans, but G. S. Osborne and L. S. Berg (1946) believe that the first stages of life took place on land, in swampy and damp places. According to modern ideas, first expressed by V.I. Vernadsky and now included in textbooks, our modern topoatmosphere (without which no animal life, which requires the presence of free oxygen, is possible) is biogenic. Without plants, animals would not only suffocate, but they would have nothing to eat, for only plants have the ability to convert inorganic forms of matter into organic ones.

In the deposits of the Archean era (see Geochronological table on p. 36) there are no reliable organic remains. The oldest undoubtedly known plant remains were found in the Precambrian limestones of Montana; Bacteria and various algae were found and well studied in Proterozoic sediments; in Precambrian deposits of the Czech Republic - wood described under the name Archaexylan, with signs of the structure of gymnosperms (that is, conifers); in the Precambrian of the Urals, indefinable remains of terrestrial plants and spores of higher plants were found; spores of higher land plants - bryophytes and pteridophytes - are described from Cambrian deposits of the Baltic region; from the Upper Silurian of the Australian province of Victoria - a flora of primitive, now extinct psilophyte plants. In the Devonian, the known terrestrial flora is already characterized by a large diversity of species and groups.

Geochronological table

Vegetable world

Thus, based on modern scientific ideas and data, we have to believe, in full accordance with the Bible, that plants were the first organized forms of organic life on Earth, and the plant world already in ancient times reached a significant diversity of forms.

The following verses talk about the creation of the Sun, Moon and stars. We have already talked a lot about cosmogony in the previous essay, so now we will formulate only brief conclusions from two scientific hypotheses of the origin of stars: 1) both hypotheses assume the presence of prestellar matter in the Universe. This matter only under certain conditions forms stars; 2) when implementing the mechanism of the second concept (assuming the presence of a special superdense state of matter), the existence of invisible stars is fundamentally possible, which can flare up in subsequent times. Further, the formation of clots of matter is possible in such limited areas beyond which no radiation can penetrate. This formation of matter can be characterized in figurative biblical language as God separated the light from the darkness.

Age of the Universe

Let us consider the problem of the age of the Earth and the bodies of the Universe, as it appears to theology and modern natural science consciousness.

For theology, the only criterion for the age of the world is the biblical texts. In the given texts of the book of Genesis, the creation of the world is described in certain stages called “days”. It is impossible to understand by them our usual astronomical days associated with the rotation of the Earth around its axis, since before the fourth “day” the Sun did not exist and, therefore, there was no change of day and night. Since the six days of the Bible - a conventional division of time - have nothing to do with the astronomical day, with their day and night, the night is therefore not mentioned in the book of Genesis in connection with the day of creation: “and there was evening, and there was morning” - for every hour had its own work, and it was not interrupted at night. This is emphasized by the order of words “there was evening, and there was morning” instead of the seemingly natural: “there was morning and there was evening - the fourth day.”

It is necessary to dwell on the chronology from the creation of the world, which was previously accepted by the entire Christian world and covers about 7000 years.

There is no data in the biblical texts to determine the age of the world. Consequently, the question of calculating the age of the world does not fall within the purview of theology. Some interpreters of the Bible tried to approach chronology indirectly, using the information available in the Bible about individual clans and generations and the history of the Jewish people, and received completely different figures. The method they used, by its very nature, could not be part of the task of determining the age of the world from the first day of creation. Science has long been trying to estimate in different ways and methods the age of various parts of the world from their very formation. First of all, let us dwell on determining the age of the Earth.

Rough, simplified calculations represent science's first infant attempts to determine the age of the Earth. Only the discovery of radioactive decay by Becquerel and the Curies allowed geology to obtain a “standard of time” that does not depend on any geological processes. At any temperature, at any pressure, radioactive elements transform into non-radioactive lead and helium at the same speed. The ratio between radioactive elements, in particular uranium, and the lead or helium formed from it, adjusted for the rate of decay, is a measure of time. The same measure of time can be the ratio between radiogenic and non-radiogenic isotopes of the same element. Without being able to delve into the details of the time determination technique, we will report only the final results of the work done by a number of researchers.

1) The most ancient minerals found on earth are 2.0–2.5 billion years old. The most ancient rocks on the earth's surface were found in Antarctica and are 3.9–4.0 billion years old.

2) The age of meteorites reaches 4.0–4.5 billion years.

3) Based on the study of solar radiation, V. G. Fesenkov believes that the age of the Sun should closely correspond to the age of the Earth and, probably, other planets, and suggests that the planets, in particular the Earth, could exist in the absence of a fully formed Sun.

4) The theory of the expanding Universe predicts its age at 15–20 billion years.

Thus, in all of the above cases, determinations of the age of objects (an expanding metagalaxy, the earth’s crust, the Sun), made by different researchers, using different methods and methods, gave figures of the same order. Based on the requirements of scientific caution, it is impossible to talk about more. Are these coincidences random? It is difficult for us, brought up on the scientific thinking of the 20th century, to imagine that the entire majestic Universe with its billions of stars would have an age close to the age of the oldest rocks on the surface of our planet and the first origin of life on it.

One can, of course, doubt that the “red shift” indicates the expansion of galaxies, one can doubt Einstein’s theory, from which, regardless of the “red shift,” the expansion of the Universe theoretically follows, one can doubt the principles of determining the age of minerals and meteorites by radiological methods and any other, one can doubt the reliability of astrophysical data, but then one has to completely deny the suitability of our observations for interpreting the Universe. Atheists stand on this path. They say that it is impossible to transfer the laws of motion of a finite, limited region of the Universe to the entire infinite Universe. In other words, they recognize two worlds: one world, where there are laws leading to “clergy,” where they, unfortunately, have to live, and another world, a world that has not yet been discovered and is unknown to us, the “otherworldly” world (!), where there are no laws leading to “clergy”. The best thing that atheists should do, so as not to get into trouble themselves, is to admit that science, due to its limitations in each specific period of time, cannot provide a complete picture of the Universe that accurately reflects it, and, therefore, is unsuitable as a method of anti-religious propaganda.

Wanting to understand the meaning of the biblical description of the fifth day of creation, we must remember that the classification among ancient peoples, as well as among modern peoples of archaic culture, has an external morphological ecological character, and not a comparative anatomical one, like modern natural scientific taxonomy. For the ancients, a lizard seemed more related to some centipede rather than a frog, a sparrow to a bee rather than a mole, a bat to a swallow rather than an elephant; Finally, wouldn’t our poorly educated contemporary compare a dolphin with a fish rather than with a cow? From a scientific biological point of view, the family relationships of animals in the examples given are just the opposite.

Reptiles and birds

So, what meaning did the ancients put into the concepts of “reptiles and birds”? Reptiles (20th century, in Hebrew sheres) means the actual worms of aquatic and animals, in some cases multiparous, which is emphasized in this text by the word yish e r e su 'let it produce', derived from sharas, which means 'to swarm, give birth' or 'to give birth in abundance'. More successfully than in the Russian translation, the 20th verse was translated by Luther: Und Gott sprach: Es errege sich das Wasser mit webenden und lebendigen Tieren, lit. ‘God said: Let the waters be troubled by swarming and living animals.’

Saint Basil the Great also gives such an expanded understanding of the word sheres in his “Six Days”. In his commentary on verse 20, he writes: “A commandment has come out - and rivers produce and lakes give birth to their own and natural species; and the sea is sick with all kinds of swimming animals,” and below, in connection with this, he lists not only fish, but also slugs and polyps, cuttlefish, scallops, crabs, crayfish and “thousands of various oysters.”

In ancient times, birds, as Basil the Great testifies, meant all animals flying over the earth, both birds themselves and insects.

In the 21st verse the word tanninim is used, denoting a large sea animal itself, translated as 'fish' in the Russian translation, and for reptiles the word used is not sheres, as in verse 20, but romeset, denoting crawling, reptiles, so in this case the Russian translation is quite accurate.

So, in verses 20–23, which we are now examining, we talk about the appearance on Earth of various animals, the ancestral home of which, according to the Bible, is water; it is said that the sea was inhabited by a wide variety of creatures - small and large, and that land reptiles arose after aquatic ones and their ancestral home was also water.

Without dwelling on the relationships between individual types of the animal world and the genetic transition of one type to another, about which there are a large number of often mutually exclusive hypotheses, let us consider the factual material that geology and paleontology currently provide.

The earliest stages of the development of the animal world are hidden from us; The first remains of animals belong to the Upper Precambrian - these are the nuclei and imprints of protozoa, the remains of the skeleton of sponges, the tubes of worms, the horny shells of brachypods, mollusks and the tubes of pteropods (crustaceans).

In the Cambrian, judging by the available remains, the animal world already reaches a huge variety of forms. There are representatives of almost all living types. In Cambrian deposits, not only the remains of hard skeletons were found, which are usually the only ones preserved in the fossil state, but also (in North America) excellently preserved prints of organisms with only a soft body: jellyfish, holothurians, various worm-like and arthropods. The words of St. Basil the Great that “the sea was sick with all kinds of swimming animals” are applicable to the Cambrian Sea.

With even greater justification, these words can be attributed to the Silurian period: up to 15,000 species of Silurian marine organisms are known. Apparently, the attempt of animals to get out of the water is associated with the Silurian, since in sediments of this age, although extremely rarely, there are remains of land arthropods, centipedes and scorpions, that is, in biblical terminology, reptiles. How this transition was carried out in general, what its stages were, we do not know; it is known that by the end of the Devonian it had already ended, because from the Devonian of North America (Pennsylvania) the imprint of a four-toed foot of a terrestrial vertebrate (Thinopus) has long been known, and from the Upper Devonian of Greenland - the first reliable bone remains of an amphibian skull.

In the Carboniferous period following the Devonian, newt-like amphibians were widespread - they were, in the full sense, animals reptiles on the ground. At the same time, insects from the Orthoptera group appear and reach their greatest development. The number of their known species - given the incompleteness of the geological record - reaches 1000. About this period we can say that “birds flew across the firmament of heaven.”

In the Permian period, along with amphibians, reptiles (reptiles in the modern sense of the word) were also widespread. The Mesozoic era is a veritable kingdom of reptiles, which not only gave rise to such gigantic forms as the 28-meter-long Brachiosaurus, but also filled the “waters of the seas,” along with a variety of fish, amphibians and a rich world of invertebrates.

In the Jurassic, flying reptiles were found, the structure of the wings of which in general resembled the structure of bats, and from Jurassic deposits two finds of real, although very primitive birds are known from the lithographic shales of Bavaria. In the Cretaceous, birds become quite numerous.

Thus, according to biblical terminology, the Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian periods and a significant part of the Mesozoic era can be called the day of reptiles and birds.

This is how the Bible talks about the first stage of creation on the sixth day. There is no doubt that by animals and livestock we should understand land mammals, and that their homeland is the mainland, but it is unclear what is meant by reptiles, since reptiles were already mentioned when describing the fifth day. Perhaps the natural scientific data themselves will help us understand the meaning of this term in the Bible.

Currently, the appearance of mammals is associated with the findings of extremely scarce remains in the Middle and Upper Jurassic deposits. Rare remains of marsupials and placental mammals are known from the Upper Cretaceous, and the following Tertiary period can be called, together with the modern Quaternary, the era of mammals; they not only dominate the land (animals and cattle), but also rose into the air (bats, etc.) and took possession of the seas (whales, dolphins, seals, walruses, etc.). The shape, richness of color and variation in size of mammals is amazing - from tiny voles to giant elephants and whales. They have mastered all the forests and steppes of the globe, they are not afraid of either the heat of the deserts or the cold of the polar countries - everywhere they are the most mobile, the most active, the most intelligent animals. Man himself belongs to them.

In all likelihood, reptiles in the book of Genesis refer to frogs, toads (that is, tailless amphibians) and snakes. Paleontological data also inclines us to this understanding of this word, since the appearance of amphibians and snakes coincides with the time of the appearance of mammals.

Is the world static?

On previous pages we saw that according to biblical and scientific data, the appearance of the Earth and the cosmos as a whole was changing. Pondering the meaning of the biblical text, theology puts forward a problem of enormous natural scientific significance: did God create the world unchanged and static, or can the world of God change and develop? Is it possible to improve in this world and grow from lower to higher in the field of spiritual activity and material, especially biological development, or is everything that exists subject to monotonous, ever-repeating closed cycles, like the movement of machine pistons? To the question: The Creator of which world should have greater wisdom and greater power? - only one answer is possible: of course, a mobile and developing world. Thus, from a Christian theological point of view, which recognizes God as Almighty, it is easier to accept natural scientific theories of a developing Universe than a static one. The great principle of universal development, which permeates to one degree or another the entire creation of God, is concentrated with special force in the inner, spiritual world of man - the crown of Divine creativity. Consequently, if a person, a creation possessing will and reason, does not work on his spiritual development, does not strive for it, then he consciously or unconsciously is an opponent of the great creative idea of ​​​​the Divine, that is, a fighter against God, conscious or unconscious, and therefore the spiritual begins in him desolation, regression.

The possibility of human mental and spiritual development has been indisputably proven throughout human history and especially by the countless host of Christian ascetics, canonized and uncanonized saints.

It seemed that theology was supposed to anticipate the ideas of the natural evolution of the world. They actually exist in embryo in some Church Fathers, although they start from different starting positions. So, for example, St. John of Damascus wrote: “what began with a change must change.” But why then did the Inquisition and the Jesuits fight against scientific discoveries, and why did some churchmen oppose the theories of the evolution of animals and plants with hostility? Why in the 19th century did they stubbornly defend the idea of ​​​​the immutability of species, although such an assumption has no basis either in Tradition or in Revelation and is contrary to all analogies in nature? Based on the limited scientific data of the ancient world and the Middle Ages, theologians created a speculative scheme of the universe, which, in their opinion, exhausted the power of God. And so, when the empirical study of nature - the creation of God, expanded the limits of His power and wisdom known to people beyond the boundaries of their old ideas, these theologians forgot that the power of the Creator extends beyond the limits of human understanding, made a noise about the imaginary atheism of scientific theories, “for His immeasurable creative power and wisdom” (Lomonosov’s words) were measured by their limited knowledge. However, not all clergy are guilty of this. Some of them were even the founders of evolutionary theories in biology. For example, the English priest W. Herbert (1837) believed that “species were created in a highly plastic state, and that through crossings and deviations they produced all currently existing species.”

Currently, biological evolution can be considered a scientifically established pattern. However, contrary to popular belief, neither zoology nor botany as the science of modern life forms (neobiology) can prove it. They can only prove the plasticity of the organism or its stability, or the nature of the relationship between these two polar properties of the organism. In short, neobiology deals with factors that can be considered factors in evolution, but not with evolution itself.

Only paleontology, together with geology, has factual documents of past eras of life. Consequently, only it can provide the factual basis for the history of the organic world, that is, the framework within which questions of the development of life can and should be developed - that empirical basis, beyond which the realm of fantasy begins.

Paleontology and evolution

However, paleontology did not immediately start talking about evolution. The famous Belgian paleontologist Louis Dollot divides the history of paleontology into three periods: the first - the period of the creation of fables, when instead of studying, they preferred to reason, and large extinct animals were mistaken for the skeletons of giants or mythological creatures; the second is the morphological period; with it essentially begins paleontology as the science of fossils, created by Cuvier in the same way as comparative anatomy; and the third period is the period of evolutionary paleontology, created by the works of V. O. Kovalevsky. “Kovalevsky’s work,” wrote Dollo, “is a true treatise on the method in paleontology.”

What geological and paleontological evidence can be given in favor of the evolution of the organic world?

1) It has been empirically established that in ancient deposits there are no modern forms and there are remains of now extinct animals, and different deposits differ from each other in different fauna, and when moving to younger deposits we encounter more and more highly organized forms. This can be explained either by Cuvier's theory of catastrophes (which assumes countless repeated creations and destructions of everything previously created, with each time more highly organized organisms appearing than in previous acts of creation), or the result of evolution.

From a theological point of view, the catastrophe theory is absurd and has no basis in Revelation. It reflects not Christian theological views, as they are trying to portray now, but the state of the factual material in Cuvier’s era, when, with a comparatively small number of paleontological finds, intermediate forms between known species and genera were not found. This circumstance, by the way, forced Darwin to devote a large section in his “Origin of Species” to the incompleteness of the geological record in order to save his theory from the blows of paleontologists.

2) In the fossil state, before the appearance of remains of new classes and other classification groups, there are remains of organisms that occupy an intermediate position between the new “future” class and the previously existing one, and their assignment to one class or another is very difficult. In this case, it is impossible to restore all stages due to the incompleteness of the geological record, since we do not know whether we are really dealing with transitional phenomena or with traces of the presence of certain classes unknown to us. This leaves a loophole for skeptics.

3) But there are genera in which it is possible to trace all the gradual transitions from one form to another from successive horizons. Moreover, the extreme forms are so different from each other that they, of course, should be classified as different species; It is impossible to draw the boundary between these species in a cross-section, since the intermediate forms give very gradual transitions. We are faced, as it were, with the situation that it is necessary somewhere conditionally to classify a mother as one species, and the daughter she gave birth to as another - a new one, and to classify two half-brothers born at the same time to different systematic units, so that somehow, at least conditionally , draw the line between species. A fact that is impossible in neobiology, but often happens in paleontology.

In this work, we do not dwell on the currently established laws of evolution (adaptive radiation, acceleration of the development of tachygenesis, irreversibility of evolution, non-specialization, etc.), since this is not directly related to our topic. Let us only note that Darwinism and evolutionary views should not be equated; they are not identical, as our high school students think.

Creation of the world and the origin of man

The problem of human origin is one of the most exciting in biology and anthropology. For several centuries it has been a battlefield between people holding different philosophical, scientific, religious and even political views.

Starting with Giordano Bruno, who in his essay “The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast” (1584) spoke in favor of the independent origin of man in different places on the globe, the ideas of polyphilia were used in the fight against the Christian religion. Similar goals were pursued by the development of the hypothesis of polygenesis of human races, which contained the statement that different races are either different species of the same genus, or even different genera. The works of monophylistic scientists, in particular in recent times (analysis of anatomical features that do not have adaptive significance - Henri Balois), have proven that the only possible concept regarding the human race is monophyly.

If the question of the unity (monophyly) of the human race can now be considered scientifically more or less resolved, then questions about the specific ways of formation of the species Homo sapiens and the antiquity of modern man are the subject of heated debate.

Between the previous stage and the Neanderthals and modern people, the oldest race of which is known as the Cro-Magnons, there is a certain break in gradualism, which is recognized by all scientists.

Archaeological finds show the impossibility of paleontologically defending the antiquity of Homo sapiens.

The question arises, why are they so stubbornly striving to prove the enormous antiquity of modern man, to prove his antiquity even at the cost of unconscious or conscious distortion of scientific facts?

The fact is that orthodox Darwinism explains the formation of man with his amazing mental abilities, which sharply distinguish Homo sapiens from the entire animal world, by the action of natural selection, which determines the entire diversity of animals and plants. According to Darwin's theory in its orthodox form, any species can evolve as a result of the fact that its individual representatives receive a slight superiority over their relatives, and only these more advanced representatives always survive the struggle for existence and only they pass on their progressive characteristics to their descendants. To explain the origin of man as the result of this extremely slow-acting mechanism of evolution, it is necessary to assume an enormous duration of his existence. The human brain is clearly superior to man's need to survive in his struggle for existence with other animals. Therefore, Darwin was forced to attribute its improvement to the long and fierce struggle of man with man and one human tribe with another. He also had to resort to the factor of sexual selection. In other words, according to Darwin, a person’s mental abilities satisfied his needs to survive in the fight against his own kind. Consequently, among peoples standing at lower stages of historical development, they should be immeasurably lower than among peoples who have gone forward in their historical development. However, modern research has discarded the idea that the so-called savages were mentally retarded.

In the above biblical verses, the first thing that attracts attention is the grammatical agreement between the singular and plural. In verse 26: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” This hints at the mystery of the Holy Trinity, which in Three Persons is the One Indivisible Deity. God is One, but Three Persons of the Divine Nature. The dogma of the trinity of the Divine is completely unknown to the ancient Jews, but is entirely connected with Christianity, therefore for an atheist this discrepancy turns into a simple slip of the compiler or copyist. For a Christian, this is a pre-revelation of what later became a revelation.

So, man was conceived by the special will of the Divine as the ruler of the earth and everything that is on it. “And the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul,” the second chapter of the book of Genesis complements the narrative of the first chapter (Genesis 2:7).

In the Bible we do not find a story about how, or by what means, man was made from the dust of the ground. It only indicates, as St. Gregory the Theologian notes, that man was created from already existing “material.” Both our soul and our body, as the great Christian ascetic St. Seraphim of Sarov taught, are created from the “finger of the earth.” Man, created from the dust of the earth, was “an active animal being, like others living on the earth<…>although he was superior to all beasts, cattle and birds.” They, as part of the earth, that is, as coming from the earth, could even serve as material for its creation. Therefore, there is nothing anti-Christian in including humans in the same systematic series with other animals, as Linnaeus did and as is now customary in biology - this is a statement of one of the aspects of human nature. There is nothing anti-religious in hypotheses of the origin of man from an ape-like creature; for a Christian, confirmation of these hypotheses only reveals how man was created in the biological process of his formation. The main thing for the Bible is not this, but that God “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul,” that is, man, who had previously been “the dust of the earth,” an animal, although the most perfect and intelligent of all animals , acquired the Holy Spirit and through this the ability of real communication with the Divine and the possibility of immortality. By coming into contact with the earthly world with his material nature, man became the king of this world and the viceroy of God on earth. And as God’s vicegerent on earth, he must continue the work begun by God - decorating and cultivating the earth for the glory of God.

In creativity, whatever it manifests itself in - whether in art, in the creation of new breeds of animals and plants or new celestial bodies - lies one of the aspects of our similarity to God. “You are gods,” said the Lord (John 10:34). We must approach creativity with prayer, with sacred mystical awe, with deep gratitude to God for the joy of our likeness to Him, with fear of what we use this likeness given to us for. Human creativity has two sides: the external one, which was just mentioned, and the internal one, which many people have currently forgotten about. Captivated by their external creativity, directed not to the glory of God, but to the glory of man, people forgot about internal creativity and, amusing themselves with their discoveries, inventions and so-called “miracles” of technology, they are losing the Kingdom of God and their immortality in a game of chance.

God offered life and death to man, good and evil (see Deut. 30:15), so that man could choose and make himself one way or another.

A person can descend to an animal state and rise with the help of God to an angelic state, for the seeds of a diverse life are embedded in him; The constantly, naturally changing world gives a person the opportunity to develop and grow according to his own will.

The world could not be built according to Beautiful Arbitrariness and not have laws, if only because a person could only cognize a world in which laws exist; Only a world developing according to laws could a person possess, only in it could a person demonstrate his creative abilities.

Having examined the biblical account of the creation of the world in the light of modern ideas, we did not see anything in it that contradicts science. It can be said with certainty that science in its development is more and more consistent with the narrative of Moses. His story in many details becomes clear only now: the beginning of the world, light before the Sun and stars, emphasizing the anthropological factor in the development of nature, and much more. A comparison of the latest discoveries of science with the Bible clearly shows how much the providence of the Jewish prophet rose above not only the limited ideas of ancient peoples, but also above the views of natural scientists of modern times. For an atheist, this is an inexplicable miracle; for an anti-religionist, this is a fact that must be kept silent; for a Christian and a Jew this is not surprising, for for them the Bible and Nature are two books written by God, and therefore they cannot contradict one another. The imaginary contradictions between them are explained by the fact that a person reads one of these books incorrectly or both together.

Looking back at the path traveled by science over many centuries to understand the Great Book of Nature, we can say in the words of Einstein: “The more we read, the more fully and highly we appreciate the perfect design of the book, although its complete solution seems to be moving away as we moving forward.”

At the very beginning of the essays it was said that Christianity considers God the Creator to be the beginning of everything. In presenting the history of creation, we consciously sought to remain on the basis of precisely established facts and generally accepted opinions in our atheistic age, contrasting them with the biblical story and not rising to theological contemplation and thought. Now, finishing this essay, it is perhaps worth touching them lightly, at least with hints.

From the biblical story about the creation of the world, it is clear that in the creation of the world after its creation, natural forces and natural processes acted and developed: “and the earth brought forth greenery,” “let the water bring forth reptiles,” etc. But these elements acted not spontaneously, but upon receiving special abilities given to them by God: “And God said: let the earth produce greenery,” and it did, “let the water bring forth reptiles,” and it did, that is, matter did not simply develop as a result of its initially existing properties , and the will of the Divine, moving from one stage to another, bestowed new abilities on the elements, expressing Itself in the form of natural laws, that is, laws that have retained their meaning to this day. In other words, God, having created matter, did not leave it to remain in chaos, but as a wise Ruler directed the development of the Universe separate from Him, being in this sense the Creator of everything visible and invisible.

The manifestation of God's will is visible throughout the history of mankind, but in most cases it is expressed in the form of natural laws - unnoticeable to the outside world, which does not even listen to miracles, but significant for a Christian. A Christian scientist must be able to see with his mind and feel with his heart the manifestation of the Divine Will in Nature and in human history and tell about It.

“It is fitting to keep a sovereign’s secret, but it is commendable to announce the works of God” (Tob 12:11).

Cm. Archpriest Gleb Kaleda. The Bible and the science of creation // Alpha and Omega. 1996. No. 2/3 (9/10). - Ss. 26–27. - Red.

In sacred books, the word “day” is used quite often without connection with the astronomical day. Jesus Christ calls the entire time of His ministry “day.” “Abraham your father,” He says, addressing the Jews, “rejoiced to see My day” (John 8:56). The Apostle Paul says: “The night is past, and the day is at hand: let us therefore put away the works of darkness” (Rom. 13:12); “Behold, now is the acceptable time, behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor 6:2). In the latter case, day is the time after the Nativity of Christ. “In your sight,” David figuratively exclaimed in a psalm, turning to God, “a thousand years are like yesterday” (Ps. 89:5), and the Apostle Peter wrote: “With the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Pet 3:8).

We find the same understanding of the biblical day in St. Basil the Great. In the second conversation on the Sixth Day, this “universal teacher,” as the Church calls him, says: “Whether you call it a day or an age, you express the same concept; whether you say that it is a day, or that it is a state, it is always one, and not many; Whether you call it a century, it will be one and not multiple.”

A critical analysis of this chronology was given in 1757–1759. the founder of the Russian natural-scientific apologetics of Christianity M.V. Lomonosov, who in his work “On the Layers of the Earth” wrote about the presence of “...implicit and dubious numbers in the Jewish Old Testament, which, like many other places in it, could not be clearly understood to this day the most skillful teachers of this language; and this is not the last reason that all Christian peoples begin calculating the years from the Nativity of Christ, leaving the ancient, as not quite definite and doubtful; Moreover, there is no agreement on this between our Christian chronologists; for example, Theophilus Bishop of Antioch believes from Adam to Christ 5515 years, Augustine, 5351, Jerome 3941.”

Polyphyly- a theory according to which life (or its individual forms) could independently arise in different places. Monophyly- theory of the single origin of life. Accordingly, the terms polygenesis And monogenesis(along with monophyly) reflect views on the origin of humanity. - Ed.

The so-called theory of primitive (prelogical) thinking, put forward in the last century by L. Lévy-Bruhl and supported by a number of ethnographers and psychologists, is based, firstly, on bias and secondly, on insufficient knowledge of the material. The same can be said about the absolutely untenable statement according to which there are no words of abstract meaning in the languages ​​of the peoples of archaic culture. - Red.

World creation. Adam and Eve.

Genesis 1.

This chapter tells us that God created our galaxy and planet Earth in six days.

1-2 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty, and darkness was over the abyss, and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters.

(Spirit is mind and consciousness).

3-5 And God said let there be light. And there was light. And God saw the light that it was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. And God called the light day and the darkness night. And there was evening and there was morning: one day.
(Here we are talking about a different light, not the light that the sun, moon and stars give).

6-8 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate water from water. And so it became. And God created the firmament, and separated the water that was under the firmament from the water that was above the firmament. And so it became. And God called the firmament heaven. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning: the second day.
(Here it is said that there is water left outside our galaxy).

9-13 And God said, Let the waters that are under the heaven be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear. And it became like this... And God called the dry land earth, and the collection of waters he called seas. And God saw that it was good. And God said, “Let the earth produce green grass, grass yielding seed according to its kind and in its likeness, and a fruitful tree bearing fruit according to its kind, in which is its seed on the earth.” And it became like this... And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning: the third day.

14-19 And God said: Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to illuminate the earth, and to separate the day from the night, and for signs, seasons, and days, and years; and let them be lamps in the firmament of the heaven to give light on the earth. And so it became. And God created two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night, and the stars; ... And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning: the fourth day.

20-23 And God said, Let the water bring forth living things; and let the birds fly over the earth across the firmament of heaven. And it became like this... And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning: the fifth day.

24-25 And God said, Let the earth produce living creatures after their kinds, cattle and creeping things and wild beasts of the earth after their kinds. And so it became. ... And God saw that it was good.

26-31 And God said, Let us make man in Our image, after Our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the wild animals, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that moves on the earth. . And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them: Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the wild animals, and over the birds of the air, and over every livestock, and over all the earth, and over every living thing that moves. on the ground.
It goes on to say that God gave plants to people and animals for food.
And God saw that everything that He had created was very good. And there was evening and there was morning: the sixth day.

This chapter complements the first.
1-6 So perfect are the heavens and the earth and all their host. And God finished on the seventh day His work that He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work that He had done. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, for on it He rested from all His works...

7 And the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.

(Here it is said that God gave people a spirit. The spirit is mind and consciousness).

8 And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he placed the man whom he had created.
(Heaven is a place where people who obey God live.)

9 And the Lord God made from the ground every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, and the tree of life in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
10 A river came out of Eden to water the garden; and then divided into four rivers.
11 The name of one is Pison: it flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;
12 And the gold of the land is good; there is bdellium and onyx stone.
13 The name of the second river is Gihon; it flows around the whole land of Cush.
14 The name of the third river is Hiddekel: it flows before Assyria. The fourth river is the Euphrates.
15 And the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.
16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou shalt eat,

17 But you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.

(What is meant here is that when a person experiences evil, he begins to sin. Any evil is sin. Sinners, after dying on earth, go to hell (Luke 16:19-31), where there is a second death (Revelation 20:11 -15) There is a first death on earth, and a second death in hell.

18 And the Lord God said, It is not good for the man to be alone; Let us create for him a helper suitable for him.
19 The Lord God formed out of the ground every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought it to man, that he might see what he would call them, and that whatever man called every living thing, that should be its name.
20 And the man named the names of all the livestock, and the birds of the air, and all the beasts of the field; but for man there was no helper like him.
(God did not give animals reason and consciousness (spirit), so they are not aware of what is happening around them, and therefore do not know how to speak).

21 And the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and when he fell asleep, he took one of his ribs and covered that place with flesh.
22 And the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken from the man, and brought her to the man.
23 And the man said, Behold, this is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she will be called woman, for she was taken from man.
24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and cleave to his wife; and they will be one flesh.
25 And Adam and his wife were both naked, and they were not ashamed.

1 The serpent was more cunning than all the beasts of the field that the Lord God had made. And the serpent said to the woman: Did God truly say: You shall not eat from any tree in the garden?
2 And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat fruit from the trees,
3 Only from the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God said, You shall not eat it or touch it, lest you die.
4 And the serpent said to the woman, No, you will not die,
5 But God knows that in the day that you eat of them, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.
6 And the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes and desirable because it gave knowledge; and she took of its fruit and ate; and she gave it also to her husband, and he ate.

(God, through the serpent, tested Adam and Eve for obedience (1 Peter 4:12-19; ​​James 1:12-18). They disobeyed God. You cannot create a person as a saint, for this he must go his own way, that is, know and good and evil, and then renounce evil and not sin. For example: if a person has not suffered, then he cannot feel sorry for other people.)

7 And the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed together fig leaves and made aprons for themselves.
8 And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day; and Adam and his wife hid from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of paradise.
9 And the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?”
10 He said: I heard Your voice in paradise, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.
11 And he said, Who told you that you were naked? have you not eaten from the tree from which I forbade you to eat?
12 Adam said, “The wife whom You gave me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.”
13 And the Lord God said to the woman, “Why have you done this?” The woman said: The serpent deceived me, and I ate.
14 And the Lord God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, you are cursed above all cattle and above all the beasts of the field; on your belly you will go, and you will eat dust all the days of your life;
15 And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; it will bruise your head, and you will bruise its heel.
16 He said to the woman, “By multiplying I will multiply your sorrow in your pregnancy; in illness you will give birth to children; and your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.
17 And he said unto Adam, Because thou hast listened to the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it; cursed is the ground because of thee; you will eat from it in sorrow all the days of your life;
18 It will bring forth thorns and thistles for you; and you will eat the grass of the field;
19 By the sweat of your face you will eat bread until you return to the ground from which you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you will return.
20 And Adam called his wife’s name Eve, for she became the mother of all living.
21 And the Lord God made garments of skins for Adam and his wife and clothed them.
22 And the Lord God said, Behold, Adam has become as one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he stretch out his hand, and also take from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever.
23 And the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he had been taken.
24 And he drove out Adam, and placed Cherubim and a flaming sword that turned around at the east of the garden of Eden to guard the way to the tree of life.

(The tree of life is immortality. God closed the path to paradise for people. Humanity had to live for several thousand years, after which this path would be open. Culture on earth was at a very low level, so people could not think logically, which means that They also could not obey God.Rom.5:12-21 - 14 However, death reigned from Adam to Moses and over those who did not sin, like the crime of Adam, who is the image of the future).

Genesis 4.
1 Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and said, “I have acquired a man from the Lord.”
2 And she gave birth to his brother Abel. And Abel was a shepherd of sheep, and Cain was a farmer.
3 After a while, Cain brought a gift to the Lord from the fruits of the ground,
4 And Abel also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat. And the Lord looked upon Abel and his gift,
5 But he did not respect Cain or his gift. Cain became very upset and his face fell.
6 And the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you upset?” and why did your face droop?
7 If you do good, don’t you lift up your face? and if you do not do good, then sin lies at the door; he attracts you to himself, but you dominate him.
8 And Cain spoke to Abel his brother. And while they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.
9 And the Lord said to Cain, Where is Abel your brother? He said: I don’t know; Am I my brother's keeper?
10 And he said, What have you done? the voice of your brother's blood cries to Me from the earth;
11 And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened its mouth to receive the blood of thy brother at thy hand;
12 When you till the land, it will no longer yield its strength for you; you will be an exile and a wanderer on earth.
13 And Cain said to the Lord: My punishment is more than can be endured;
14 Behold, now You are driving me from the face of the earth, and I will hide from Your presence, and I will be an exile and a wanderer on the earth; and whoever meets me will kill me.
15 And the Lord said to him, “Therefore, whoever kills Cain will have sevenfold vengeance.” And the Lord made a sign for Cain, so that no one who met him would kill him.
16 And Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the land of Nod, east of Eden.
17 And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived and gave birth to Enoch. And he built a city; and he named the city after the name of his son: Enoch.
18 Enoch was born Irad; Irad gave birth to Mechiael; Mechiael gave birth to Methuselah; Methuselah gave birth to Lamech.
19 And Lamech took for himself two wives: the name of the one was Ada, and the name of the second was Zillah.
20 Adah gave birth to Jabal: he was the father of those who lived in tents with their flocks.
21 His brother's name was Jubal: he was the father of all those who played the harp and pipe.
22 Zillah also gave birth to Tubalcain, who was a forger of all tools of copper and iron. And Tubalcain's sister Noema.
23 And Lamech said to his wives: Ada and Zillah! listen to my voice; the wives of Lamech! listen to my words: I killed a man for my wound and a boy for my wound;
24 If Cain be avenged sevenfold, Lamech seventy times sevenfold.
25 And Adam knew his wife again, and she gave birth to a son, and called his name Seth, because, she said, God gave me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain killed.
26 Seth also had a son, and he called his name Enosh; then they began to call on the name of the Lord.

1 This is the genealogy of Adam: When God created man, He created him in the likeness of God,
2 Male and female he created them, and blessed them, and called their name man on the day of their creation.
3 Adam lived a hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, in his own image, and called his name Seth.
4 The days of Adam after he begat Seth he was eight hundred years old, and he begat sons and daughters.
5 And all the days of Adam's life were nine hundred and thirty years; and he died.
6 Seth lived a hundred and five years and begat Enosh.
7 After he begat Enosh, Seth lived eight hundred and seven years and begat sons and daughters.
8 And all the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years; and he died.
9 Enosh lived ninety years and begat Cainan.
10 After Cainan was born, Enosh lived eight hundred and fifteen years and begat sons and daughters.
11 And all the days of Enosh were nine hundred and five years; and he died.
12 Cainan lived seventy years and begat Maleleel.
13 After he begat Maleleel, Cainan lived eight hundred and forty years and begat sons and daughters.
14 And all the days of Cainan were nine hundred and ten years; and he died.
15 Mahalelel lived sixty-five years and begat Jared.
16 After he begat Jared, Malalel lived eight hundred and thirty years and begat sons and daughters.
17 And all the days of Malalelel were eight hundred and ninety-five years; and he died.
18 Jared lived one hundred and sixty-two years and begat Enoch.
19 After Enoch was born, Jared lived eight hundred years and begat sons and daughters.
20 And all the days of Jared were nine hundred and sixty-two years; and he died.
21 Enoch lived sixty-five years and begat Methuselah.
22 And Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years and begat sons and daughters.
23 And all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years.
24 And Enoch walked with God; and he was no more, because God took him.
(Of all the people living before the flood, only Enoch went to heaven).

25 Methuselah lived one hundred and eighty-seven years and begat Lamech.
26 After the birth of Lamech, Methuselah lived seven hundred and eighty-two years and begat sons and daughters.
27 And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred and sixty-nine years; and he died.
28 Lamech lived one hundred and eighty-two years and begat a son,
29 And he called his name Noah, saying, He will comfort us in our work and in the labor of our hands in cultivating the land which the Lord has cursed.
30 And Lamech lived after he begat Noah five hundred and ninety-five years, and begat sons and daughters.
31 And all the days of Lamech were seven hundred and seventy-seven years; and he died.
32 Noah was five hundred years old, and Noah begat Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

1 When people began to multiply on the earth and daughters were born to them,
2 Then the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were beautiful, and they took them to be wives, whichever one chose.

(The sons of God are those who called on the name of the Lord).
3 And the Lord said, My Spirit will not forever be despised by men; because they are flesh; let their days be a hundred and twenty years.
4 At that time there were giants on the earth, especially from the time when the sons of God began to come in to the daughters of men, and they began to give birth to them: these are strong people, glorious people of old.
5 And the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually;
6 And the Lord repented that he had created man on the earth, and was grieved in His heart.
7 And the LORD said, I will destroy from the face of the earth man whom I have created, from man to beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowl of the air I will destroy, for I have repented that I made them.
8 But Noah found grace in the sight of the Lord.
9 This is the life of Noah: Noah was a righteous man and blameless in his generation; Noah walked with God.
10 Noah fathered three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth.
11 But the earth was corrupted before God, and the earth was filled with evildoings.
12 And God looked upon the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had perverted its way on the earth.
13 And God said to Noah, The end of all flesh is come before Me, for the earth is filled with evildoings from them; and behold, I will destroy them from the earth.
14 Make yourself an ark of gopher wood; make compartments in the ark and coat it with pitch inside and outside.
15 And thou shalt make it thus: The length of the ark is three hundred cubits; its breadth is fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits.
16 And thou shalt make a hole in the ark, and make a cubit at the top, and make a door to the ark at the side thereof; arrange lower, second and third housing in it.
17 And behold, I will bring a flood of water upon the earth, to destroy all flesh in which is the spirit of life under the heavens; everything on earth will lose life.
18 But I will establish my covenant with you, and you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives will come into the ark with you.
19 Thou shalt also bring into the ark two of every living creature, and of every flesh, that they may live with thee; Let them be male and female.
20 Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the livestock according to their kinds, and of every creeping thing that creeps on the earth according to its kind, twos of every one will come to you, so that you may live.
21 Take for yourself all the food that people eat, and gather it to you; and it will be food for you and for them.
22 And Noah did everything: as God commanded him, so did he.

Series of messages " ":
Part 1 -
Part 2 -
...
Part 4 -
Part 5 -
Part 6 - The Bible. Old Testament. World creation. Adam and Eve.

(1 day) First, God created (=created from the word “creatures” God’s (or created?) God heaven and earth. (What does the earth look like? How is the sky structured?)
“The earth was formless and empty, and darkness was upon the deep; and the Spirit of God hovered over the water. (What does “formless” mean? How did the “spirit of God” hover? And over what water?)
And God said: Let there be light; and there was light. (Where does the light come from? Who gives the light? What is light?)
And God separated the light from the darkness. And God called the light day and the darkness night. (How did he separate? The mechanism of separation?)

(2nd day)And God said: Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate water from water.
And God created the firmament. And God called the firmament heaven; (what does the firmament look like? what kind of water is from which water? if God called the firmament heaven, where is this water above the sky?)
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(3rd day) And God said: Let the waters that are under heaven be gathered into one place; and let dry land appear; and it became so. And God called the dry land earth, and the collection of waters he called seas.
may the earth produce greenery, grass, trees
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(4th day) And God said: Let there be lights in the expanse of the heaven to separate the day from the night, and for signs, and times, and days, and years, (like a chronometer) and let them be lamps in the expanse of the heaven. (What do the lamps look like? why and how do they shine? where does the energy for lighting the lamps come from? how do they count the times of events and years?)
And God created two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night, and the stars; and God placed them in the firmament of the sky to shine on the earth, and to rule day and night, and to separate light from darkness. (What kind of government is this? Who controls whom? How are the lamps and stars fixed in the firmament of the sky? How is day separated from the night? ?(mechanism))

(5th day) And God said: let the water bring forth reptiles, a living soul; (how will water bring forth a living soul? and reptiles?) and let birds fly over the earth, across the expanse of heaven; (how can birds fly across the “firmament”?) And he created God of large fish and every living animal (so who created the soul - water or God?) the reptiles that the water produced, according to their kind, and every feathered bird according to its kind.
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(6th day) And God said: Let us make (together with whom?) man in Our image and in Our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and the birds of the air, and over the beasts, and over the cattle, (what is the difference between “cattle” and "beasts"?) and over all the earth (but not over the water?), and over all the creeping things that creep on the earth. And God created (now “he” alone?) God created man in His own image, in the image of God created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them: Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the wild animals, and over the birds of the air, and over every livestock, and over all the earth, and over every living thing that moves. on the ground.
And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed that is on all the earth, and every tree that has fruit yielding seed; This will be food for you (but not the meat of these animals and cattle?)