Religion

In the Beginning: Science Faces God in the Book of Genesis

In the Beginning: Science Faces God in the Book of Genesis

Language: English

Pages: 226

ISBN: B00KQZY532

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


In the Beginning: Science Faces God in the Book of Genesis. The beginning of time. The origin of life. In our Western civilization, there are two influential accounts of beginnings. One is the biblical account, compiled more than two thousand years ago by Judean writers who based much of their thinking on the Babylonian astronomical lore of the day. The other is the account of modern science, which, in the last century, has slowly built up a coherent picture of how it all began. Both represent the best thinking of their times, and in this line-by-line annotation of the first eleven chapters of Genesis, Isaac Asimov carefully and evenhandedly compares the two accounts, pointing out where they are similar and where they are different.
 
“There is no version of primeval history, preceding the discoveries of modern science, that is as rational and as inspiriting as that of the Book of Genesis,” Asimov says. However, human knowledge does increase, and if the biblical writers “had written those early chapters of Genesis knowing what we know today, we can be certain that they would have written it completely differently.” Isaac Asimov brings to this fascinating subject his wide-ranging knowledge of science and history—and his award-winning ability to explain the complex with accuracy, clarity, and wit.

The Old Master: A Syncretic Reading of the Laozi from the Mawangdui Text A Onward (SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture)

The Atheist's Bible: The Most Dangerous Book That Never Existed

Why the Catholic Church Must Change: A Necessary Conversation

God in Pain: Inversions of Apocalypse

Zen and Japanese Culture (Bollingen LXIV)

What God Desires:The Story of the Center for Humanitarian Aid and Disaster Relief

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The sun, the moon, the planets, and stars, by shifting their positions relative to each other, make a calendar possible, but the fact that they also give light is secondary. 16 And God made two great lights; 33 the greater light 34 to rule the day, 35 and the lesser light to rule the night: 36 he made the stars also.37 33. The two great lights are, of course, the sun and the moon. They are clearly larger than any of the planets or stars. They are the only glowing objects in the sky (barring an

misinterpretation in the earlier cases. 34. The sun is the greater light, but not in actual apparent size. The sun and the moon are almost exactly equal in apparent size, as can be seen whenever the moon moves in front of the sun to produce a total solar eclipse. That this is so is entirely coincidence. The moon and sun are of course quite different in size. The moon has a diameter of 2,160 miles, and the sun one of 864,000 miles, but the sun is just sufficiently far away to cancel out its

with the lunar month. The probable reason for this was that there happened 94 In the Beginning… to be seven “planets” in the sky that changed position regularly against the background of the fixed stars: the sun, the moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. To the Babylonians, it seemed to make astrological sense to suppose that each planet was in charge of a particular day (since each planet was in turn the province of a particular god). An eighth day in a week would be a day without

be so, but none of these alternate paths to 10 In the Beginning… truth is compelling. Whatever one’s internal certainty, it remains difficult to transfer that certainty simply by saying, “But I’m sure of it.” Other people very often remain unsure and skeptical. Whatever the authority of the Bible, there has never been a time in history when more than a minority of the human species has accepted that authority. And even among those who accepted the authority, differences in interpretation have

that of a giant box. In modern terms, then, the verse would have begun, “Make thee an enclosed ship.…” 205. Gopher is an untranslated Hebrew word. We have no idea what kind of wood is meant by it. 15 And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.206 206. As usual, the P-document revels in numbers. A cubit is about eighteen inches long, so the dimensions of the ark as

Download sample

Download