How Was The World Created?

[SaveABug]

My son is 16, and his history teacher asked every student to write their answer to this. He was wondering if he should say something ambiguous. I said, no, follow your scientific reasoning and write what you want.

He wrote about the big bang theory. I can't wait to see how many said God created the world in 7 days - what was it? A week ago?

I love my son.

[Rick Myers]

1. Big Bang!

Your son is a-okay!!!

Welcome to DU!

:toast:

[SaveABug]

2. Thanks

Sometimes it concerns me how smart my son is. Life is good!

[kixot]

3. It was shat out by a giant frog onto the back of a giant tortoise.

At least that's what the voices told me.

Is 'shat' a word?

[SaveABug]

4. I'm not sure

I asked the Great Frog God, and he said

That's a word. But I thing he meant Shat's a word. He gets tired sometimes. I hate to interpret. You should ask directly!

[Rick Myers]

5. Dubya claims to be pResident

'shat' is a word!!! Just like you need to put food on your family... I know small business, I was one...

:thumbsup:

[drb]

6. But do you ever wonder....

....what was happening 20 minutes before the big bang?

[seventhson]

7. Read "Bwefore the Big Bang" By Dr, Ernest Sternglass at radiation.org

I consider him a friend and a genius. A wonderful book. follow the links at radiation.org for a mindblowing explanation and philosophy of the big bang and what preceded it.

[incontrovertible]

9. from the review

the reviewer seems to be a Deist agnostic.

A better question than "what happened before the Big Bang" is, "from what did the medium in which the Big Bang took place, originate?"

In other words the "primeval atom", or "singularity", had to be sitting somewhere, had to exist, in order for it to have become the "Big Bang."

Where?

And how?

Hawking seems to reduce this to multidimensional string theory, which, if I understand correctly, essentially boils down to "mathematics is eternal and universal. Therefore, the medium in which the Big Bang took place is mathematical in nature, and so has always existed."

Which I frankly find to be hooey. The number 5 exists. It does not step forth into the tridimensional reality to effect physical change to the basic structure of matter, however.

[Abaques]

22. Of course you realize that time as we comprehend it started...

...with the big bang. How time works has changed since the big bang started.


I am dangerous, I know enough astro-physics to understand that, but not to explain it properly.


Read "The Elegant Universe" by Brian Greene


...and more importantly, have your son read it. Its written so that the layperson can understand it and its a fantastic introduction to relativity, quantum mechanics, and string theory.


BTW.... what on earth is your son's history teacher doing asking for a writting assignment like that?

[short bus president]

8. loaded word, "created"

something inventive and totally off-the-wall would be my response. Not unlike the aforementioned frog and turtle story.

Gotta try to break through the infighting over big bang v. hand o' gawd with humor where ya' can.

[Aristus]

10. The Vikings believed that the world was licked out of a glacier

by a magic cow. Makes about as much sense as the Genesis creation. So says this liberal Christian.

[incontrovertible]

14. "Let there be light"

sounds like a pretty Big Bang to me.

I'm not a literalist by any stretch, but belief colors one's perception, one supposes.

I frankly think it's unfair (for the Left) and stupid (for the Right) to try to cast the Bible as a would-be science textbook. Metaphorically speaking, Genesis is a lot less about the creation myth than it is about the reason why we suffer and die. It's also one of the earliest recordings of the concept of something More than temporal, bound-by-nature existence. Primitive man left their dead where they fell, and went on with the hunt, thinking their kin no more or better than the leaves around them - we know this from the archaeological record; it wasn't until Cro Magnon, a mere, what, 30,000 years ago(?), when we started to ritualize death, and form myths around existence outside of mortal lifespan.

The Old and New Testaments can be summed up in very short passages.

OLD: You're not God, and you're not going to be God. Worship only God, not Stuff. Take care of widows and orphans.

NEW: You're still not God, even though God took the time to tell you how to behave, that doesn't make you God. Worship only God, not Stuff. Take care of widows and orphans, and while you're at it, treat others the way you want to be treated.

Shame that offends so many people, and drives so many others to behave like such raging dicks.

[Cheswick2.0]

26. I love your interpretation of the OT and NT

I think I will have to share that with my Pastor and see if he will put it in the monthly newsletter.

[incontrovertible]

29. why thanks

very kind of you.

The NT summary could be embellished further to try to account for the cosmological balancing act requiring the blameless martrydom of God/man in place of universal damnation of the fallen, but in essence, I believe that was pretty much the subtext of the Gospels.

[Tikki]

11. Not created....

...Evolved from random processes....

[Don_G]

12. In A Week?

Of course, if God is eternal then he may not have a watch that conforms to "our" standards.

[incontrovertible]

15. the number seven

is the most ritualized and symbolic number in the Bible. It's purely metaphorical. Leftists who try to portray it as crackpot, and Rightists who try to portray it as literal, are both profoundly off-base.

[Don_G]

19. I Agree

The Bible was written by man for man....

There's a lot of history behind it but I don't believe it's the definate word in much else beyond the 10 Commandments practiced in every religon since 2000 BC.

[Fenris]

13. Oh, everybody knows

It was greated when the primordial gods slew the fire giant and left him to rot, and it is from this corpse that the world took shape...not through creation but through decomposition.

[Don_G]

24. Or Maybe God Had An An Orgasm

...Let there be life...!

[NightTrain]

16. My grandfather used to say....

"God took a shit and--plop!--there was the earth."

[incontrovertible]

17. you know what'd be funny

would be to relate the $cientolgist creation myth, in which Xeno imprison the Thetans on a giant volcano and exploded a hydrogen bomb there, and the vaporized Thetans infested the bodies of earthborne apes.

[leftofthedial]

18. It was an FDR WPA project wasn't it?

good socialist construction project

[opihimoimoi]

20. The atoms and compounds which comprise Earth come from dust

resulting from exploding stars. We are star dust. The dust coalesed in a giant ball creating our sun. the planets are leftover dust.

So sez Mongo of the Cave

[leftofthedial]

21. Stardust?

"Love is now the stardust of yesterday
The music of the years gone by."

I was conceived at the Starlight Drive In.

Thanks Mongo.

[kimchi]

23. I danced the universe into being.

Ya had ta be there. It was AWESOME.

[TreasonousBastard]

25. My personal favorite...

was that these cockroach lookin' critters were the oldest beings in the universe and knew God during the creation.

He spent the whole week working, and then took off for lunch on Saturday, saying something about finishing the job when He got back.

They haven't seen him since.

[Cheswick2.0]

27. How would I know?

anyone who thinks they have it all figured out, whether scientific or religious, is delusional.

[Born_a_Democrat]

28. INTRODUCING...THE CREATOR OF ALL THINGS...LOOK UPON HIM

[HEyHEY]

30. I MADE IT

Foolish Mortals!!!!

[Kamika]

31. 7 days..

You know 7 days was most likely not our 24 hour "days"

I think god did create earth and im sure it happened just like most scientists says.

[Liberal Veteran]

32. It sprang forth from the primordial lotus flower

In the lesser known pantheon of gods, Hephasteses and Areminis (respectively the God of static electricity and the goddess of sandals) were angry at one another, so Areminis turned herself into a warthog to entice Zeinus, god of the calcium supplements, to place a small rock of calcium in the urinary tract of Hephasteses, who experienced great pain in passing it. His pain was great that he urinated into the holy fountain and Alga, goddess of water plants, was so moved that she caused the primordial lotus flower to absorb the kidney stone that Hephasteses passed and transform it into the earth.

(And don't get me started on how humans were created).