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In the April 2014 edition of Discover magazine, astrophysicist/cosmologist Avi Loeb states that the Bible attributes the appearance of stars and galaxies to the divine proclamation "Let there be light". Is Mr. Loeb's statement correct? No; of course not. God created light on the very first day of creation; while luminous celestial objects weren't created until the fourth.

The Bible is notoriously concise in some places; especially in it's story of the creation of light. Well; the creation of light was a very, very intricate process. First God had to create particulate matter, and along with those particles their specific properties, including mass. Then He had to invent laws to govern how matter behaves in combination with and/or in the presence of, other kinds of matter in order to generate photons.

The same laws that make it possible for matter to generate photons also make other conditions possible too; e.g. thermodynamics, fusion, dark energy, gravity, atoms, molecules, magnetism, radiation, high energy X-rays and gamma rays, temperature, pressure, force, inertia, friction, and electricity; et al. So the creation of light was a pretty big deal; yet Genesis scarcely gives its origin passing mention.

â€*. Gen 1:1-2 . .The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep

That statement reveals the cosmos' condition prior to the creation of light; and no mystery there because sans the physics that make light possible, the cosmos' particulate matter would never have coalesced into something coherent.

2Cor 4:6 verifies that light wasn't introduced into the cosmos from outside in order to dispel the darkness and brighten things up a bit; but rather, it radiated out of the cosmos from inside-- from itself --indicating that the cosmos was created to be self-illuminating by means of the various interactions of the matter that God made for it; including, but not limited to, the Higgs Boson.

Some Bible students regard science an enemy of religion; but I sincerely believe that is a bad attitude to take towards science. Galileo believed that religion and science are allies rather than enemies-- two different languages telling the same story. Religion provides answers to questions that science cannot answer, while science provides answers to questions that religion does not answer.

1Tim 6:20 commands Christ's followers to avoid "science-- falsely so-called". However, not all science is false. Previous to what we might call the modern era, many scientific ideas were theoretical and largely untested. and therefore subsequently proven largely false. But that all began to change as men begin making, not ideas, but discoveries; and discoveries are far more reliable than untested ideas.

There are well-meaning folk who prefer to keep science out of the first chapter of Genesis. I truly believe that is an error because though the cosmos has a supernatural origin, it is not a supernatural cosmos; rather, it is a very natural cosmos and the creation story makes better sense, at least to me anyway, when it's approached from that angle.

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