Theology/Creation/Gerald Schroeder
Expanding Time - 6 Day Creation Theory
Israeli physicist Gerald Schroeder - posits a theistic creation theory that upholds both a literal 6-day Creation Account of Genesis 1 (Calendar-Day) with with modern scientific theories of the age of the universe (Old earth).
Schroeder propounds his position in his books Genesis and the Big Bang and The Science of God.
- First, he contends that since the Jewish calendar begins with Adam, we may take the six creation days as separate from this clock. (Adam being less than 7,000 years ago.)
- Second, he employs Einstein’s relativity theory, under the assumption that the six “days” are days from a different frame of reference than ours on earth, namely from the initial Big Bang (from our frame of reference, the universe is 15 billion years old).
- Under this scheme, the first day is 24 hours from the “beginning of time perspective,” and 8 billion years from ours. The second day, 24 hours from the beginning of time perspective, was 4 billion years long from ours. The third day from our vantage point was 2 billion years, the fourth day one billion years, the fifth day half a billion, and the sixth day was a quarter billion years long.
- To Schroeder’s delight, this adds up to 15.75 billion years, the same as the modern cosmologists’ calculation. The appeal of this view is that it does not need another meaning for “day,” and at the same time harmonizes with modern cosmology.
Media
Gerald Schroeder: Correlation Between The Big Bang and Biblical 6 Days of Creation (p1)
Days of Creation - The Correlation Between the Bible's 6 Days and Modern Scientific Dating p2/2
Professor Gerald Schroeder, author of the books, "Genesis and the Big Bang" and "The Science of God," explains his theory to Zola Levitt. He argues that there is needless conflict between science and the Bible, and that those who advocate a creation of only 6 days based on a literal reading of Scripture and those who argue that the fossil record proves that the earth is 15 billion years old are both correct. It is a matter of perspective. The correlation is made possible by using Einstein's theory of relativity. The stretching of the universe is responsible for the discrepancy, and Schroeder demonstrates how the redshift (a secular number describing the amount of stretching) allows the precise matching of the biblical timeline and modern scientific dating. This correlation holds true for both the creation week as a whole and for each individual day. An elegant theory, it demonstrates the precision of Scripture along with its concise nature. As Schroeder notes, "We have fifty thousand books at MIT describing these things; the Bible in 31 sentences brings it together." Professor Schroeder is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering and a two-field doctorate in nuclear physics and oceanography. He taught at MIT for a number of years before moving to Jerusalem to teach at Hebrew University.
2 of 2 programs on creation/ The first deals with the creation week as a whole.