Genesis according to science: The Empirical Creation Story

This was first written on February 8, 2009. I put it up on this site on February 10, 2023.

1 In the beginning, the big bang created the heavens.

1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

2 The universe was formless and infinitesimal. Plasma hotter than a thousand suns permeated the explosively expanding fabric of space.

2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

3 Inflation slowed, the universe cooled, and there were protons and neutrons.

3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

4 The particles were good; and were differentiated from anti-particles, becoming ever so slightly more abundant.

4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

5 The particles were called matter, and the anti-particles were called anti-matter, and there was the beginning and there was the ending of the first millisecond.

5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

6 Temperatures plunged as space grew, and matter annihilated anti-matter. Nearly all particles were wiped from the universe, but quadrillions upon quadrillions of photons remained.

6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

7 And there were neutrons that bonded with the protons.

7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

8 And there was ionized hydrogen and deuterium, with only a single proton for each. And there was the beginning and there was the ending of the first four minutes.

8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

9 And the Universe cooled still more so that electrons could orbit protons, and the first stable atom was born.

9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

10 Photons dislocated from matter, propagating through space for all eternity, to be called the cosmic background radiation.

10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

11 And there were fluctuations in the uniformity of matter, with gravity seeding galaxies across a billion light years.

11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

12 Great clouds of gas condensed, and dark matter and dark energy were abundant, and it was good.

12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

13 There was the beginning and there was the ending, the first billion years.

13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.

14 And from gas and dust, great lights formed in the expanse of the heavens, called the stars, which mark the seasons.

14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

15 And they gave their light upon many trillions of coalescing planets.

15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

16 And there were moons that formed around the planets, and reflected the light of the suns.

16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

17 And so too did the Earth form from the rotating dust cloud of the solar nebula, and the Sun gave it warmth.

17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,

18 And the Sun governed the day and the night, and it was good.

18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

19 There was the beginning and there was the ending, the first nine billion years.

19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

20 The molten Earth cooled and its crust hardened. An atmosphere formed and condensed, changing Earth into an ocean planet.

20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

21 And lifeless molecules swarmed in the water, colliding, breaking and re-forming in billions of configurations, and it was good.

21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

22 And one of the molecules that formed was a replicator, configured to reshape other molecules in its own likeness. It was fruitful and multiplied itself, filling the waters in the seas.

22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.

23 There was the beginning and there was the ending, ten billion years.

23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

24 The replicators copied imperfectly, and most variants died off. But a few, able to copy even faster than their ancestors, proliferated.

24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

25 Materials for replication were scarce and competition was fierce, and only the fittest varieties survived.

25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

26 And through myriad minute changes over millions of generations, some evolved the power to destroy and others mechanisms for their defense.

26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

27 And descendants that banded together were more likely to survive, and from these great colonies arose multicellular organisms.

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

28 The creatures multiplied and photosynthesized. They produced oxygen which transformed the air, and they spread onto the accreting continents.

28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

29 And they became every plant and fish, every insect and reptile, every bird and mammal, forever fighting for the survival of their genes, the remnants of the original replicators.

29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.

30 And there was the platypus and opossum, the mole and wombat, the elephant shrew and elephant, the manatee and armadillo, the mole and bat, the camel and horse, the cat and rabbit, the rat and beaver, the squirrel and guinea pig, the colugos and lemur, the tarsier and gibbon, the orangutan and gorilla, the bonobo and chimpanzee, the homo habilis and homo erectus, the homo rhodesiensis and homo neanderthalensis, and then there was the human.

30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

31 And humans considered themselves the center of all existence. And there was the end, and the beginning, 13.8 billion years.

31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

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