God Meets Science
In the Presidential Election, the Two Don't Get Along. But Should They?
By: Daniel Friedmann
Do you believe that evolution should be taught in public schools, and that it should be presented as the only explanation for how the species arose? Based on statements made in the past few years by President Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney, it appears they both would answer "yes."
However, Romney's fellow Republicans don't all agree. For example, Republican Congressman Paul Broun from Georgia recently announced that evolution, embryology, and the Big Bang theory are "lies straight from the pit of hell."
Furthermore, Romney may have recently changed his mind since in the first presidential debate he stated, "We're all children of the same God" -- in stark contradiction to evolutionists' conclusion!
Meanwhile, only 15 percent of the US population believes in naturalistic evolution as the explanation for our origins!
And while the Catholic Church has stopped arguing against scientific findings such as the age of the universe or when life first appeared, it holds that whatever happened was guided in some way by God; in agreement with nearly half of Americans.
For the past couple hundred years, the creation-evolution conflict has been a recurring point of contention in the United States, from the presidential election to what should be taught in schools. American science legend Carl Sagan tried to settle this conflict by calling both camps "non-overlapping magisterial" - in other words, science and religion each preside as the source of wisdom over separate domains.
However, most of us feel that Sagan's explanation is not right. In fact, it turns out that a significant portion of Americans believe science and religion can coexist when it comes to explaining our origins.
The problem between science and religion did not originate over the question of HOW we came to be ? creation vs. evolution ? but over the question of WHEN the Earth came to be. The creation-evolution conflict was sparked when early geologists began to find evidence that the Earth was older than the Bible seemed to indicate.
Today science tells us that the universe is 13.7 billion years old and the earth 4.5 billion years old; seemingly in contradiction to the biblical creation timeline of six days, less than 6,000 years ago.
A couple years ago I found the blueprint for my house, a piece of rolled up paper with lots of lines that bore little resemblance to my beautiful three-dimensional home. I could not make heads or tails of the blueprint. That is, until I saw the scale: 1 inch equals 8 feet. Now I could compare the blueprint and the house - everything matched, at least as to what it was and how big it was.
Now, the Bible claims to be the blueprint for the universe; but has anyone bothered to look for the scale of this blueprint? I mean, the story is narrated in creation days (analogous to the role of inches on the house blueprint), but what are these creation days in the physical structure, the universe?
It turns out that the Scriptures contain the scale ? it has been found: 1 creation day is 1,000 X 365 X 7,000 or 2.5 billion years. That's right, the scale is really simple, it's been there all along, and when you apply it to events in Genesis, it converts 19 events to the time we measure in science.
What do we get after converting these events? Agreement within measurement error; very old Scriptures contain the times for key events relating to the development of the universe and the appearance of life on Earth that science has only recently uncovered.
So if both science and the Bible agree on what happened and when it happened, why keep arguing?
Because there is still the HOW it happened. But having found agreement on the "when" and the "what," sheds new light on the issue. It is time to check out the scale, reread the biblical blueprint and stop the 200-year-old argument in politics, education....
Daniel Friedmann is the author of The Genesis One Code, and CEO of an aerospace company. He has a master's in engineering physics and 30 years' experience in the space industry, and has published more than 20 peer-reviewed scientific papers. He is also a long-time student of cosmology and religion.
