Genesis 1:6-8 “And God said, ‘Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the water which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.”
I need to stress, the creation accounts describe events as they appeared from the Earth’s surface. When you look at those same events from space, the different vantage point gives a whole new perspective on what’s happening.
The underlying event of the “second”, “third” and “fourth” days is the change in Earth’s atmosphere. The exact mechanism behind the change is not known. That it had to is certain.[1] The geological record shows and scriptural account implies the Earth was uninhabitable shortly after it was made. The simple answer is God did it. How He did it we can only guess, but there is evidence of several processes that did it. The two primary causes are hydrogen and helium escaping from the atmosphere and sequestration[2] of oxygen by the minerals in the Earth's surface. The latter process began only after primordial life appeared in the oceans.
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| Artists' rendition of the early Earth shortly after the moon has been blasted out. |
Regardless of the cause, the sequence of events had to be just right, otherwise the Earth would have ended up in a much different state. Venus anyone? So far the exoplanets we’ve observed fall into two categories: gas giants and rocky cinders. Few show any evidence of significant bodies of liquid water.
What is interesting is the changes that did occur are accurately depicted in the scriptural account. Consider what you’d see from the “surface” of the Earth when it’s atmosphere was so thick it was opaque. There would be no day and night just an unending dusky twilight much like what exists on Venus now[3]… perhaps even a dark and dreary world. There could be water on the surface, but it would be nothing like what we see now. Imagine a world where water is ice, not because it’s cold but because of enormous atmospheric pressure. It’s actual temperature is well above the “boiling” point we are accustomed to today.[4] Was it this extreme? I don’t know for sure, but it could have been.
My guess is the atmosphere or “firmament” which the viewer saw was a hazy, opaque, mixture of super heated fog and steam, and toxic gasses. All caused by meteor impacts. From space, the Earth looked like a large version of Venus with brilliant white clouds. There would also be a plume of hydrogen gas streaming away from it, something like what New Horizon’s[5] observed as it sped away from Pluto. (In the case of Pluto the stream is nitrogen, not hydrogen.)
As the hydrogen escaped, atmospheric pressure decreased and its ability to carry water and hold heat dropped. And just like Mars[6], the Earth cooled. It’s not inconceivable to imagine the first manifestation of this change was a clearing of the air near the ground creating the “firmament” mentioned in Genesis. There would be heavy rains from lowering clouds over dark bodies of water. Just as the scriptural record indicated there was water both above and below the firmament. The lightning from all that rainfall would have been amazing.
The nearest contemporary image I can conceive is a heavy rain storm over the ocean. The coalescing of water into large surface bodies, allowed by the cooling and initial clearing of the atmosphere near the surface were the primary events of the second day. It prepared the way by making the Earth able to support life which is THE event of the third day. Stay tuned…
Post script: there have been quite a few comments back and forth in the discussion thread about the scriptural accounts being literal or figurative.
My take: the accounts are true but not literal. What they say is true, but they don't tell all that happened. They are figurative only in that allegorical lessons, parables, can be drawn from the creation event. This gives them the “feel” of a figurative narrative. Put another way, they are a simplified description, like a child’s story book, of a complex process. It’s “dumbed-down” so we, with our limited understanding, can grasp what happened.
Consider too, the power of stories as teaching mechanisms. The true ones leave the stronger impression. It’s the same with the creation story… it carries more weight when you consider it to be true. Not literally so, nor figuratively, but true just the same
Peace.
1. Earth's early atmosphere is not what we have today
2. Some of Earth's atmosphere escaped into space
3. Standing on the surface of Venus now... like early Earth??
4. Evidence of Wet Neptunes
5. Nitrogen escaping from Pluto
6. Mars once had water and lost it
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