Darkness in the Bible
Now let’s compare the nucleosynthesis scenario with the ancient scenario most similar to it, Moses’ creation account.
The First Evening
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters (Genesis 1:1–2). In the beginning all of space was empty and there was darkness. The darkness was formless but seething with energy. The energy was denser than any known fluid. It was organized in tiny but mighty packets of waves. The waves rushed in all directions at a high, constant, absolute speed. Nothing yet existed to give a name to that speed. The universe consisted of very energetic gamma rays, darting to and fro through empty space. Some of these rays were the energy that would later materialize and become the Earth. The Earth had no form at all, because the rays were going in all directions. Before the energy materialized, the Earth was empty but it still existed, because the energy existed. The waters also existed, but like the Earth they were also as yet unformed. The rays were invisible. All was dark, the first evening. Darkness throughout nature is called night.
Energy has density and exerts pressure like any fluid. Gravity attracts it toward regions of greater density. But at the beginning the energy distribution was almost completely uniform. The uniformity made the attraction almost equal in all directions. There was no perceptible gravitation. One would have felt there as astronauts feel in free fall. Therefore the Earth was a great abyss of dense, fluid energy, with nowhere to stand.
We now know that the way Moses described the physical situation in the first verses of his creation narrative is correct in every detail. He used common words, words that one may understand in their ordinary, literal meaning, to describe an event no one has ever seen. What he here calls night and evening is simply darkness prevailing throughout the universe for an unspecified period of time.
No one knew anything about particle production before the 20th century. Yet thousands of years before, Moses said that the darkness came first, before there was any light. Small minds may dismiss this insight as trivial, but so great a mind as that of Augustine did not. Augustine said, “What can darkness be, but absence of light?”[i] But he noted carefully that Moses says the Earth existed in a formless, empty, dark state before there was light. Later Augustine said that the created heavens were very nearly like God, and the Earth was very nearly like nothing.
If darkness is merely the absence of light, then darkness is nothing. “Nothing,” the absence of anything, needs no creation. A story of creation should not start with nothing, but with the first act of creation. One may take the first line of Genesis, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, as a summary of the creation narrative, and verse 3 as the first act of creation, And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. But then what does one do with verse 2, which describes the condition of the Earth before there was light? The Earth was formless, empty, and dark, but it was not mere nothingness! It therefore makes much more sense to consider the first line as the narrative of an act of divine creation at the very beginning, and the appearance of light some time later as the first visible result of formation.
[i] Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, Book XII, Chapter iii, Section 3.
The First Evening
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters (Genesis 1:1–2). In the beginning all of space was empty and there was darkness. The darkness was formless but seething with energy. The energy was denser than any known fluid. It was organized in tiny but mighty packets of waves. The waves rushed in all directions at a high, constant, absolute speed. Nothing yet existed to give a name to that speed. The universe consisted of very energetic gamma rays, darting to and fro through empty space. Some of these rays were the energy that would later materialize and become the Earth. The Earth had no form at all, because the rays were going in all directions. Before the energy materialized, the Earth was empty but it still existed, because the energy existed. The waters also existed, but like the Earth they were also as yet unformed. The rays were invisible. All was dark, the first evening. Darkness throughout nature is called night.
Energy has density and exerts pressure like any fluid. Gravity attracts it toward regions of greater density. But at the beginning the energy distribution was almost completely uniform. The uniformity made the attraction almost equal in all directions. There was no perceptible gravitation. One would have felt there as astronauts feel in free fall. Therefore the Earth was a great abyss of dense, fluid energy, with nowhere to stand.
We now know that the way Moses described the physical situation in the first verses of his creation narrative is correct in every detail. He used common words, words that one may understand in their ordinary, literal meaning, to describe an event no one has ever seen. What he here calls night and evening is simply darkness prevailing throughout the universe for an unspecified period of time.
No one knew anything about particle production before the 20th century. Yet thousands of years before, Moses said that the darkness came first, before there was any light. Small minds may dismiss this insight as trivial, but so great a mind as that of Augustine did not. Augustine said, “What can darkness be, but absence of light?”[i] But he noted carefully that Moses says the Earth existed in a formless, empty, dark state before there was light. Later Augustine said that the created heavens were very nearly like God, and the Earth was very nearly like nothing.
If darkness is merely the absence of light, then darkness is nothing. “Nothing,” the absence of anything, needs no creation. A story of creation should not start with nothing, but with the first act of creation. One may take the first line of Genesis, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, as a summary of the creation narrative, and verse 3 as the first act of creation, And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. But then what does one do with verse 2, which describes the condition of the Earth before there was light? The Earth was formless, empty, and dark, but it was not mere nothingness! It therefore makes much more sense to consider the first line as the narrative of an act of divine creation at the very beginning, and the appearance of light some time later as the first visible result of formation.
[i] Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, Book XII, Chapter iii, Section 3.