Dinesh D'Souza On Genesis Chapter One

Dinesh D'Souza in his bestselling book, What's So Great About Christianity? offers a simplistic answer to the problem of Genesis chapter one. This is what he wrote:

The Big Bang resolves one of the apparent contradictions in the book of Genesis. For more than two centuries, critics of the Bible have pointed out that in the beginning--on the first day--God created light. Then on the fourth day God separated the night from the day. The problem is pointed out by philosopher Leo Strauss: "Light is presented as preceding the sun." Christians have long struggled to explain this anomaly but without much success. The writer of Genesis seemed to have made an obvious mistake.
Dinesh offers the solution Christians everywhere have been waiting for:
But it turns out there is no mistake. The universe was created in a burst of light fifteen years ago. Our sun and our planet came into existence billions of years later. So light did indeed precede the sun. The first reference to light in Genesis 1:3 can be seen to refer to the Big Bang itself. The separation of the day and the night described in Genesis 1:4 clearly refers to the formation of the sun and the earth...The Genesis enigma is solved..." (p. 123)
But Dinesh is badly mistaken for many reasons. Let me merely mention just one of them. On Day One God created light, which, Dinesh says represents the Big Bang. Then on Day Two God is doing something on earth, he creates the firmament and separates the waters on earth from those in the heavens. On Day Three God again is doing something on earth. He makes dry land appear. When we finally get to Day Four God already has an earth, a firmament, and dry land. But on Day Four we see God creating the universe of sun, moon and stars. This "solution" of his is no solution at all, for if Dinesh wants to harmonize the Big Bang with Genesis then he must try to harmonize all of it. And according to modern astronomy there were already stars and galaxies before there was an earth, or at least, they were all formed at the same time. If the earth existed before the universe of stars and galaxies, which were supposedly created on the fourth day, this contradicts what we know from the evidence of the Big Bang itself.

22 comments:

Evan said...

John the heuristic to follow is very simple and I'm sure Dinesh is just following in the footsteps of apologists from Paul forward.

First, decide what it is you want to believe.

Second, find a passage in the Bible that supports what you believe when read the way you want it to be read.

Third, PROFIT!

Scarecrow said...

From the other end (scientific) Light is comprises of photons, photons are the messenger particles of the elctromagnetic force. During the intial expansion of the sigularity there were no individual forces they were unified. Without a electromagnetic force no photons, no photons no light. The early universe, at least until it cooled enough for the forces to coalesce out of the hot soup was opaque to light.

Bart said...

As an atheist, I never understood why more christians didnt accept big bang cosmology.

I've long explained to them how genesis could be a metaphor for modern cosmology.

Dinesh pointed out how light came first, as in the big bang.

Now to the other parts. Separating the firmament could be a nice description for the creation of the original basic elements, and explain why comets and such have so much ice in them. Explaining how dry land came up from the sea is partially correct, since when the earth began to cool, the water vapor condensed and it rained on the earth for hundreds of thousands of years. I admit its a bit tricky explaining how the sun and stars came after the earth.

I try to sell these ideas to christians to get them used to the idea that science is reality. If they accept modern cosmology and biology, then perhaps their children will be less likely to believe the bible, and more trusting of science.

breakerslion said...

Yeah, it all makes sense now.

"Then on the fourth day God separated the night from the day."

So... day 1 through 3 were not just one day because? Oh! Oh! I know... 'cause God turned to His angels and said, "Let's call it a day!"

Then the angels turned to one another and said, "What the F___ is a day? Is He screwing with us again?"

Boy, making up bullcrap sure is fun! Send me $1 and I'll tell you how to live your life, too.

Ranting Student said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
James said...

Off topic, but you have to see the Betty Bowers "prayer" video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=m5QqEmBi8iw

"Amen: It's like "abacadabra", only Christian!"

Ranting Student said...

sorry, my first post had a humiliating typo...

*EDIT*
Nice point. I simply knew someone somewhere would try to bring justice to a religion that makes it hard to seek truth in.

I'll be sure to check out that book sometime.

akakiwibear said...

Bart, I like your style as for your I admit its a bit tricky explaining how the sun and stars came after the earth. perhaps we have to change our perspective - perhaps it took awhile for the sky, stars an' all to be visible from the earth, hence the confusion in your superb parallel

peace

Joe E. Holman said...

Excellent, John!

This guy (D'Souza) is supposed to be some new pocket-rocket of Christian apologetics. I think he's a complete and total buffoon myself (albeit an eloquent and well-spoken one).

As per Genesis 1:1-2, the earth ("the deep") was around before this "big bang light" of D'Souza's, and as you mentioned, the stars weren't around yet, and that bankrupts this unforgivable error.

Personally, I have no respect for Christians who try to take mythical passages from Genesis and turn them into descriptions of the big bang. It's not only wrong, but it's insulting to the intelligence. It's vacuously stupid on every level.

Moses knew dick about the big bang, and the honesty of a sheep dog is all that is required to see it.

(JH)

Stan, the Half-Truth Teller said...

Such obvious question begging.

If the creation of light on Day 1 is the Big Bang, then what of the creation of plants on Day 3 before the creation of the sun on Day 4?

Why is the Moon referred to as a "light", which "governs the night", when neither statement is true?

So much is clearly false regarding the Genesis 1 account of creation, that it is absolute folly for any reasonably educated person to attempt to defend it -- unless that person means merely to profit from and perpetuate the ignorance of his intended audience.

The thread which discussed the likelihood of apologists (and proselytizers in general) to intentionally deceive their audience(s) was talking about precisely this sort of behavior.

Obviously, the author of the Genesis 1 account could not conceive of creating anything without a light source, so he invented one. Obviously, he could not contemplate any light spectrum outside the visible range, so the light source fell within it. Obviously, the author was so full of crap, scientifically speaking, that only a deluded assclown would attempt to argue anything other than allegory or metaphor.

What's next? Humans as old as Yoda? Super-strong men whose power is in the length of their hair? The destruction of a mighty walled city by a marching band? A 600-year-old man penning two (or seven) of every animal on the planet -- which animals spontaneously arrived at his doorstep, ignoring their instinctual desires to eat one another and/or him -- for a boat-ride for over a year, with only himself and his immediate family as zookeepers?

Next you'll tell me some idiot actually believed his pregnant fiancé was a virgin, who an invisible super-powerful being had caused to become pregnant, and that her eventual child will have super-powers like the (admittedly bad-ass) ability to turn water into wine (beer?), to walk on water, to heal people by touching them, to raise people from the dead, to fly, and to spontaneously resurrect himself, and that he's still around, but after his spontaneous resurrection, he discovered the ability to remain invisible forever.

No, no, don't tell me -- somebody believes this? Must be the absolute dumbest guy on the planet, all alone and miserable. Well, at least nobody can get hurt by a story like that...

--
Stan

Logosfera said...

@bart. Christians don't except big-bang cosmology for the same reason they don't except evolution: big bang (or evolution take your pick) => original sin is a metaphor => we are not born with sin => jesus had nothing to save => jesus was not obligated to come to earth and died for nothing => we have no obligation towards god (even if he exists) => religion dies => moral relativism => chaos, war and imorality ad infinitum :)
Of course, along the way of this line of thinking there are thousands of priests and apologists trying to block the make sure the religion doesn't die and make them contribute to society.

I. said...

I wanted to bring up the plants, too, but Stan already did.

I just started reading the Bible some days ago, and I must admit I was surprised at how much is so obviously wrong. It baffles me that people believe this book has some superior truth.

Even if the light before the sun and the stars can be explained, somehow, by the Big Bang - there is no way the plants can.

Besides, why would an all powerful God need to create a sun if he could have night and day (because he somehow created that before the stars) without it?

Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) said...

There is no problem with Genesis creation story as long you jsut realize that it's not a scientific account. It's not history. Its' myth. It's myth in the true sense of myth, manipulation of symbols for the purpose of transmitting truth at the level of the psyche. Its not about science, or how the world was made, its about ancient man's understanding of his relationship whit the divine. that's all it has to be about.

Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) said...

As an atheist, I never understood why more christians didnt accept big bang cosmology.

hey I been wondering the same thing.

I've long explained to them how genesis could be a metaphor for modern cosmology.

Dinesh pointed out how light came first, as in the big bang.

Now to the other parts. Separating the firmament could be a nice description for the creation of the original basic elements, and explain why comets and such have so much ice in them. Explaining how dry land came up from the sea is partially correct, since when the earth began to cool, the water vapor condensed and it rained on the earth for hundreds of thousands of years. I admit its a bit tricky explaining how the sun and stars came after the earth.

I try to sell these ideas to christians to get them used to the idea that science is reality. If they accept modern cosmology and biology, then perhaps their children will be less likely to believe the bible, and more trusting of science.

It doesn't have to be any of that. It's not about science. It's about the spirit. It's about the relationship with God. The rest is just the mythological symbols of the day.

DingoDave said...

Carbon Based wrote:
"The early universe, at least until it cooled enough for the forces to coalesce out of the hot soup was opaque to light."

-"Three millennia later and the universe had reached its 3000-year birthday. Before this, the universe was dominated by radiation. However, while the density of matter drops as an inverse-cube law (volume), radiation density drops as an inverse-quartic (volume plus a red-shift effect). At this ripe-old age, matter took over as the dominant expansion material and the matter era began; the universe was on the order of 105 K at this point.

The universe continued to expand and cool, but if we were to have existed back then (baring the fact that our atoms would not have yet been formed), we would not have been able to "see" anything. The universe was opaque to light and radiation.

This is because all of the electrons were still too energetic - too hot - to be bound to nuclei, and therefore were able to roam freely about. This means that photons - particles of light - could not move about freely, for they kept being absorbed and re-emitted by the electrons.

When the universe had aged to 380,000 years, it had cooled to approximately 3000 K (5000 °F). Electrons no longer had enough energy to overcome the attractive force of atomic nuclei, and became bound to atoms. Light could now stream forth unimpeded. This process is called "recombination," and this "first light" is what we now see as Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation."
http://burro.astr.cwru.edu/stu/advanced/cosmos_history.html

If Yahweh ever really said "let there be light", then according to modern cosmologists, it took about 380 000 years for the universe to respond to his command. : D
Dinesh D'Souza is such a dick!

Scarecrow said...

Dingodave wrote:

If Yahweh ever really said "let there be light", then according to modern cosmologists, it took about 380 000 years for the universe to respond to his command. : D
Dinesh D'Souza is such a dick!


I guess "Let there be quarks" just doesn't have the same ring to it. LOL

I get so tired of christians trying to find some correlation between ignorant bronze age writing and 21st century science.

Evan said...

JL you say:

There is no problem with Genesis creation story as long you jsut realize that it's not a scientific account. It's not history. Its' myth. It's myth in the true sense of myth, manipulation of symbols for the purpose of transmitting truth at the level of the psyche. Its not about science, or how the world was made, its about ancient man's understanding of his relationship whit the divine. that's all it has to be about.

Here's what I would say to that:

There is no problem with the Bible as long you just realize that it's not a scientific or historical account. It's not history. Its' myth. It's myth in the true sense of myth, manipulation of symbols for the purpose of transmitting truth at the level of the psyche. Its not about science, or how the world was made, or history, its about ancient man's understanding of his relationship with the divine. That's all it has to be about.

If Christians believed that ... they would be very benign. Sounds like you should go to work on them.

nearenough said...

There was no light for the first 300,000 years after the big bang. During that time the universe was completely opaque. Check out any cosmology book and you will find out that the universe only became transparent and able to transmit light after that period of opacity (due to the extreme density of all matter).

goprairie said...

jlh, nice first step in admitting that genisis is myth. now let's work on the rest of the books of the bible until you are willing to admit finally that the whole of it is myth and that even the concept of god and spirit are myth. then we can finally get all this crap out of our government and policy making and move on to smarter bases for the way we do things. and my kid won't have to observe that silly moment of silence in school any more.

Shygetz said...

You mean Dinesh D'Souza cherry-picked certain parts of the Bible and then made a loose correlation between them and science in order to make a dishonest claim of the prophetic truth of Genesis?

Quel suprise!!!

Remember, this is the guy who wrote an entire book saying that since Al Qaeda hates us for our freedom, we should stop having so much freedom. Asshattery follows D'Souza like u follows q.

Unknown said...

Stop thinking in modern western scientific closed terminology and try, very hard, to think in prosaic, poetic, parallelistic (sorry!) hebraic language.

I can't tell you everything now but, to begin:

Verse1: seven hebrew words=synopsis of verses 2 - 31 .
Verse2: fourteen hebrew words=synopsis of chaos/disorder of matter and Gods intimate care for it (hover lit. means 'brood' or, wait for it, 'vibrate' - like an atom).

God creates light. FULL STOP. (big bang? space,time,matter and light need each other...)

nothing else can exist without the above, we all agree on that don't we?

Now we get to the moulding stage:

day1 (kingdom of light/dark) = day4 (kings: sun/moon
day2 (kingdom of sky/water) = day5 (kings: birds/fish)
day3 (kingdom of land)= day6 (kings: animals/man)

(the above is prosaic, poetic parallelism with so much hidden beauty it is a work of art - not a scientific treatise)

day7 = order has been brought to chaos of verses 1 & 2.

Please do know that this does not solve all the issues, neither does it do justice to the complexity of both the language of Genesis 1 (and 2), nor the scientific constructs that some deem antithetical to that language.

Do not think in linear terms, but in block terms, like big pictures being filled in.

Interestingly, Revelation uses paralellism for the end of time...
when God (and we with Him) will rest...after Christ has spoken the words "It is finished/done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End" (rev.21), the same words he spoke on the cross (it is finished)...again do not think in linear terms...

with only the kindest regards

pils

zilch said...

pils-

1) Yes, I'll be the first to admit it: as creation myths go, Genesis is quite nice and very poetical.

2) So? Gilgamesh is also very poetical.

3) And attributing recherché structures and meanings to an old text like the Bible (atomic vibrations? You've got to be kidding) might be fun, but it doesn't prove diddly squat. Given a large enough corpus, and vaguely defined words, you can coax any meaning you want out of any text.