The Creation story and Science are compatible

Many people think that the religious story of how God, our Lord, created the World is completely incompatible with modern science. In fact, this is a misconception based on extreme Christian interpretations of the Book of Genesis (Bereshit).

Here we will bring forth two very important points which are rarely considered when talking on this topic.

The Seven Days

We need to consider that the first seven days were not the same as the usual seven days of the week we all know. As we know from the text of Genesis/Bereshit, the Sun and Moon did not exist until the fourth day (Genesis 1:14-19).

Aside from that, the boundary between the ending of one day and the beginning of the next day were not clearly defined up until the times of the rabbis of the Talmud (see Babylonian Talmud, tractate Sabbath).

Therefore, we can say that the "day" (or Yom/יום, as is the original Hebrew term) in that earliest stage of the Universe's history is not necessarily the same as the 24-hours-long days of our current epoch.

The Primordial Soup

In Genesis/Bereshit 1:20 we read:

God said, "Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and birds that fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky."

This, considering what we just said about the duration of a "day" in this period, is a pretty obvious reference to the concept of the Primordial soup - the primal body of water in which the primitive forms of life on our planet evolved.

Of course, the text does not expand too much on the tiny details of the evolution of the specific organisms, species, subspecies, etc., because these are not relevant to the story being told in the same way the life of a farmer in, lets say, for example, Southeast Asia would not be relevant when telling the story of David and Goliath.

Here we will finish with this short article. We hope that it has helped you get rid of pre-existing confusions on the topic and wish you a good and blessed day.