Response to
Genesis and the Big Bang

A book authored by Gerald Schroeder

In 1990 Bantam Books published a 212 page book entitled Genesis and the Big Bang: The Discovery of Harmony Between Modern Science and the Bible. The author, Gerald L. Schroeder holds a Ph.D. in applied physics from MIT. Genesis and the Big Bang has received considerable attention from the Christian community since Pat Robertson began interviewing Schroeder on his television program.

The scientific content of Genesis and the Big Bang reflects scholarly integrity, as does that of Schroeder's more recent book, The Science of God. Schroeder's creation theology seems sound for the most part. Our only point of significant disagreement is the time frame for the creation chronology.

Schroeder's premise is that the Creator's time frame for the Genesis 1 creation account is different from our human time frame. The difference, arises from God's capacity to move at "relativistic velocities," that is, to move relative to the earth at speeds approaching the velocity of light. What seems billions of years for us, then could be just 144 hours for Him. In this way Schroeder can believe that the creation days of Genesis 1 are six consecutive 24-hour periods without throwing out science which shows us a billions-of-years-old universe and Earth.

Schroeder, who is Jewish, interprets the relativistically extended creation days as six equal time periods covering the roughly 15-billion-year era from the universe's creation to humanity's creation. One problem with his view is that it clashes with the scientific data on the timing of Earth's origin. Since the earth already exists on the first creation day of Genesis 1, Schroeder's model would say that Earth began at least 12 billion years ago. Scientific measurements, however, show that it is only 4.6 billion years old.

Our view is that Genesis 1:2 establishes the frame of reference for the creation events: "The Spirit of God was brooding (or hovering) over the surface of the waters." In other words, God's time and space frame in describing creation is the earth's surface, a frame in common with all readers of the account. The text gives no hint of Schroeder's relativistically time-extended creation days.

If one seeks Jewish support for a day-age interpretation of Genesis 1, Nathan Aviezer, another Jewish physicist, offers it in a book entitled In the Beginning: Biblical Creation and Science (Hoboken, NJ: KTAV Publishing House, 1990). Aviezer acknowledges that the six creation days of Genesis 1 must refer to long time periods.

- Hugh Ross and Miguel Endara

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