In previous studies at TTB.org I was thrilled to study Genesis as a byproduct of working our way through some other books. I just couldn't wait until we started over and started with that book itself. I loved watching the opening to 2001: A Space Odyssey and the opening to John Huston's The Bible and listening to The Message being read aloud in Genesis 1. I especially liked realizing the obvious that had slipped right by me- which was that the whole Bible is an ever-increasing snowball or whirlwind of time. As McGee says, the gospels spend chapters detailing a few hours but the first 11 chapters of Genesis describe at least two thousand years and probably eons. The first verse alone; much less the space between it and the second verse- could be an eon or two.
I think what we call science is worthwhile and all, but it's really just a working out of a bunch of grownups trying to come to term with they or their grandparents' Bible stories of childhood. It would be interesting to compare sciences that have developed away from the Bible. I think it's sad but probably true that right now there aren't any. Scientists are either trying to prove God out or prove God in- just like the folks in my religion classes. They don't know it, but each one of them is either trying to make their parents proud or disprove them. The family might not have gone to church for three generations, but back there somewhere there's a grandpappy that someone today is trying to exorcise from significance.
I think the ancient Greeks had a science as long and developed as ours and that would have not been affected by the Bible. What's the difference between Socrates' science and Sagan's? That's a question I'd like an answer to.
Before that, the Egyptians has a few thousand years of development, and that must have included what we would call science. How does that compare?
Acupuncture seems to be helping me immensely and that's based on non-Biblical science. There must have been a corresponding science for each civilization but aren't they all subsumed underneath Western science now? That has to be an over-simplification but don't they all turn to Western Science with a capital S to verify themselves?
Spinning forward from Genesis, all the preachers' sons who liked their daddies set out to prove the Bible right and all the ones who didn't set out to prove it wrong. But what were they doing? They were observing, recording, testing and categorizing. Adam named the animals and so did they. They searched for Eden geographically and sociologically and psychologically. They pried open corpses and divided light from the darkness wherever they probed. because they wanted to be like God. All myths border on the real, but there is no ancient book more attached to geography than the Bible. There was no other system of thinking that would have brought about the Renaissance/Enlightenment/Reformation in the same way. How else did we get to the point where we know more about the latest pop star then we do about any ancient queen? How else did we get to the point that we look at pictures of what a stranger ate for lunch rather than explore the cosmos?
We know more and more about less and less. We actually think that the tiny pill we take with that feast will affect us more than the five plates we ate it with.
I want to go back to Genesis 1 and study the eons and the various interpretations in movies and scientific theories. I want to dive into the details. But the amazing thing about Genesis 1 is that there aren't any details. We fill them in, but it is so bare-boned. It's a backdrop for the human story and nothing else. We're supposed to lean from the stories of men; which culminates in the life of Christ. So many try to divine the end but I think it's about now.
It's about time.
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