The Bible or science?

– Why if man evolves from ape, apes do not continue to evolve? , he asked me.

While talking to a friend who believes very much in the existence of God, I expressed my doubts about what the Bible says about the creation of things on planet Earth in six days, especially the origin of man.

Was it really all done in six days? Do you know who could have done these things in such a short time? How was man created? I asked him, is man really created with mud?

– God did everything – his answer was and he said that he did not believe in the theory of evolution as proposed by the late British scientist Charles Darwin, nor in the Big Bang.

– Why if man evolves from ape, apes do not continue to evolve? , he asked me. This answer forced me to further research the question of the formation of living things, as well as analyze the Big Bang theory, a controversial thesis that goes against the biblical version regarding the origin of humanity and other species.

ActWhy did man not evolve from another animal, but from a monkey? who created the monkey And everything on earth, if not the mysterious divine figure they call God?

These are other questions accumulating skepticism about scientific theories. It is a topic that we must analyze with caution and without passion as we celebrate the millennium Holy Week, a holiday according to Catholic Bishop Victor Emilio Massalis “was hijacked by some sectors, such as commerce, which took advantage of conditions to increase their sales”, and he said that over time, “there was a decline in customs and celebrations heralding Holy Week”. (Source: Gazette Caribbean (April 10, 2022).

Someone at the virtual library (one theorist among many out there) answered these concerns in three stages: 1) because we were another type of monkey and evolved differently, although they may evolve at some point; 2) because if we evolved from another animal, we would not be what we are; 3) Apes evolved from bacteria to become us. Are these answers credible?

It is common in popular culture to hear the phrase “man comes from ape”. In fact, I have seen many humans endowed with the characteristics of apes: the eyes, the mouth, the nose, and even the way they walk. Next to my house is a (very social) neighbor with these characteristics and we can speculate that he is caught up in the evolutionary process, if this theory is correct.

In order to address this question, we must start from the scientific concept of the central nucleus of evolution Where an individual, if he has traits that help him to survive, is more likely to have offspring who inherit these traits. But evolution is not something that can be studied by following specific animals, but rather by examining entire populations. That is, we don’t have to find a monkey evolving into a humanbut what we should note is that a whole group of apes became human.

And finally (says the theorist) the truth that makes the sentence so wrong The “man comes from the ape” is that humans did not evolve from gorillas or orangutans, but we are all apes, and thus descend from the same evolutionary branch. This means that millions of years ago there was a “primitive ape” from which different groups of monkeys arose that, over time, differed from each other. This evolutionary process resulted in different groups of apes that we know, so it’s not that gorillas are less evolved animals than we are: they just evolved in a different way. “

the big explosion

I turned to the Big Bang theory to explain the origin of Homo sapiens. In physical cosmology, the big bang theory is a scientific model that attempts to explain the origin and subsequent development of the universe from the space-time singularity. This is what science says.

The Big Bang is the moment when all matter emerges from “nothing”, that is, the origin of the universe. Until then, matter was a point of infinite density, which at a certain moment “explodes” generating expansion in all directions.

According to these investigations, “Immediately after the moment of the explosion, each particle of matter began to move away from each other very quickly, in the same way that when inflating a balloon it occupies more space by expanding its surface. Physicists have been able to reconstruct this timeline of events from 1/ 100th of a second after the Big Bang. Matter thrown in all directions consists of elementary particles, such as electrons, positrons, mesons, baryons, neutrons, photons, and more than 89 particles known today.”

The oldest recorded event in the universe we know dates back to about 12,000 million years agoYes, in this first moment, all the energy of the universe (and all of space) was concentrated in a single point, which was the source of the Big Bang (Big Bang). In the first few seconds, the temperature exceeded a trillion degrees and all the energy was in the form of radiation. During the first 10 seconds, elementary particles formed, and after 15 minutes, nuclei of hydrogen and helium formed, in a ratio of four to one. After about 10,000 years, the temperature dropped to about 100,000 degrees and the first hydrogen atoms were formed. After about 400,000 years hydrogen They began to condense into clouds (future stars), which in turn were grouped into larger groups (future galaxies).

11,000 million years ago, the temperature of the universe was about 3,000 degrees, And the first stars formed: Gravity caused the cores of many hydrogen clouds to reach high temperatures, up to 15 million degrees, allowing hydrogen to fuse into helium, a process that causes the luminous emission of stars. When stars deplete the hydrogen in their cores, they are able to continue generating energy by fusing helium into heavier materials. In this way, in the cores of the first stars, all the chemical elements that are currently on Earth were formed.

Another interesting detail that science shows is that “the sun started shining about 5,000 million years ago. By this time the universe had already cooled to about minus 100 degrees. There are many theories about how the planets of the solar system formed, but either way, The age The age of the Earth is estimated to be about 4.6 billion years. At first it was a glowing mass that took its surface Relatively little to cool off. Part of the atmosphere was liquefied, and thus seas and oceans were formed (the Bible tells that they were created by order of God). The chemical composition of the atmosphere and oceans was very different from today: the ozone layer does not exist Which currently protects us from ultraviolet rays, the atmosphere has supported intense electrical activity. These circumstances encouraged the formation In the waters of increasingly complex chemical compounds and diverse organic compounds that would culminate in the emergence of life forms.”

Life arose on Earth about 3.5 billion years ago. And so began an evolutionary process for animals and plants about which we have little data.Because the first forms of life were microscopic, then soft animals and plants (algae and worms) do not leave fossil remains. This first period of life is known as the Precambrian, and it extends until the time when we can more faithfully follow biological evolution through fossils.

Who believes the Bible or science? Does the personality of God really exist, or is it a subjective personality made up in the faith of believers?

Personally, I have always been skeptical of the biblical version (Genesis 21, 22 and 23) about the creation of man from clay and woman with a man’s rib.