The God of the Bible is the Intelligent Designer for all Creation

There are very few nouns in Hebrew, so they took on a variety of meanings which is common in the Hebrew language. The old Testament, written in Hebrew has only 3,000 words in the entire language (minus names), whereas in the English language there are ~1 million. Old Testament Hebrew has such a small vocabulary that almost every single Hebrew noun has multiple, distinct literal definitions. This is why it is so important to look at the context to see which definition is being used. The word “days” in Genesis 1 translates to the Hebrew word “YÔM” which has four literal definitions. The Hebrew word “Earth (Erets)” has five literal definitions and the Hebrew word “Heaven (shamayim)” has three. This also applies to the nouns “evening” and “morning” which have multiple distinct literal definitions each. It can mean evening and morning, it can mean evening and morning of a 24 hour day, it can mean evening and morning of an era or the beginning and the ending . The main point we're making is that there is a beginning and an ending point that’s not necessarily what we consider to be a 24 hour day. The creation "days" are finite periods. Below are the definitions for “days” or "YÔM" in Hebrew:

· A portion of the daylight hours

· All of the daylight hours

· A 24 hour period (sunrise to sunset)

· A long but finite period

YÔM however, cannot be interpreted as indefinite (anytime or someday) or as infinite. William Wilson, in "Old Testament World Studies", explains that YÔM is frequently used for time in general or for a long time; a whole period under consideration. YÔM is also used for a particular season or time when an extraordinary event happens.

Three of the definitions for “Yom” are used in Genesis. For example, day one is contrasting days and nights referring to the daylight hours. Creation day four is contrasting seasons, days and years referring to a 24 hour rotation period. Genesis 2 is an expansion of the events in day six. In Genesis 2:4 the word day is used to refer to the entire day of creation history. What also leads us to believe that the “day’s” described in Genesis 1 refer to longer periods of time is that here is a significant time separation between when God creates Adam and then when He creates Eve. In Genesis 1 both of them are created in day six which must be a significant passage of time. In Genesis 2:8-9 says that God put man into the garden and made all kinds of trees grow. This occurred before Eve was created. It would take a lot more than a 24 hour period day for Adam to watch the trees grow and tend the garden. It would take a long period of time for the garden to decay enough to require tending.

In Genesis 1 for the first six days there is a “morning” and an “evening” bracketing the beginning and ending of each creation day, but there is no “morning” and “evening” on the seventh day. We know it had a beginning which leads us to believe that it has not ended. We are still in creation day seven, a day where God doesn’t create, He rests. There are other Bible text that confirm this; Psalm 95:11, John 5:17, Hebrews 4:3 all declare that we are all still in Gods day seven. We should also note that “morning” and an “evening” referring to "day" only appears in the Bible once in Genesis 1, day 1. The only other passage that comes close is in Psalm 55:17 "Evening, morning and noon I cry out in distress, and he hears my voice." David prays to the Lord, but it never mentions the word day. Notice in Genesis 2 there morning or evening was omitted. The seventh day is the day God stops creating.  

• “Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. 2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day He rested from all his work. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.” Genesis 2:1-2

This answers the fossil record enigma where there is approximately one new species per year accelerated and proceeds to decreased before humans came into existence. Why do we see in the fossil record previous to human beings all this evidence for new phyla, classes and orders suddenly appearing and we don't see any evidence of this in the human era. This period occurred between day six and seven of creation. When humans appear in Genesis 2, the new species fossil record has already dropped to zero.

• “Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” Genesis 2:7 

There have been no other life forms that have come into existence since human beings were created. 50K - 100K years ago, there were over ~8,000 mammals species over the face of the earth. Today there are only ~4,000. Over half have gone extinct during that human period and the replacement rate is zero. After the period between day six and seven we have not seen the appearance of a single (new) mammal species since.

Dr. Hugh Ross, "A Matter of Days", 2004

There is no Hebrew word for universe used in Genesis 1:1, instead there is an idiomatic phrase called "the Heavens and the Earth" which is used 13 times in the Old Testament referring to creation. The Heavens and the Earth were created before the creation days begin in Genesis 1:3 The Bible does not give a definitive passage of time although we can surmise it took billions of years between events since we know the universe is 13.8 billion and the Earth is 4.54 billion years old. Genesis 1:2 refers to the initial conditions of planet Earth having a dark surface, covered in water and empty of life. In Genesis 1:3 God is hovering over the surface of the Earth as the point of reference just before He begins to create life. We are to interpret the six creation days from the point of view of an observer on the surface of Earth's waters as opposed to interpreting it from above the Earth. The Hebrew word rāḥap̄ means to "hover" which is only used two times in the Bible. The only other time is in Deuteronomy 32:11-12 where it describes a female eagle hovering over its newly hatched young. A number of Bible scholars have said that this word is referencing the six days of creation where God creates life on planet Earth. So on creation day one God creates the marine bacterial life because water is still covering the entire Earth's surface. Then terrestrial life follows thereafter. If we examine the verb order in Genesis 1:1-2 and grammar, it is distinct from the word orders and grammar used in Genesis 1:3-31. Hebrew scholars say that this implies that there is a passage of time between Genesis 1:1 to Genesis 1:2 when  and between Genesis 1:2 to Genesis 1:3 when God created the universe and creation day one. 

• "And the earth was a formless and desolate emptiness, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters." Genesis 1:2

Exodus 20:8-11 is often cited by Young Earth Creationists as the verses that define the creation days as a literal 24 hour period in reference to the Ten Commandments, implying that we must work six days and rest of the seventh day. This is because in Genesis God worked six days and rested on the seventh day. Implying that we are to work six days and rest on the seventh day because God did too in Genesis 1 and He commands us to do the same. It's important to note that the preposition we see in the English translations is not present in the original Hebrew where it says "for in six days", the word "in" is missing. There are also five text between Exodus though Deuteronomy that refer to the Sabbath that refer to our Sabbath and Gods Sabbath. Young Earth Creationists need to read all five examples because only two of the five does God make a comparison between our work week and His work week. For instance in Exodus 23:10-11 there is a statement about working the agricultural land for six years and leaving it unused for crops the seventh year so the land can recover. There is a scientific reason for allowing the land to remain unused for a year without the use of insecticides. Nematodes will take all the crops if there isn't that years rest. Human beings are biologically designed that we function best when we have a rest day following every six day of work. God is a spiritual being, not a physical being and doesn't have biological limitations so His rest period can be any period of time that He wants because there are no limitations. As Gleason Leonard Archer Jr., a Hebrew Biblical Scholar, argued that if we are going to apply the young Earth interpretation to Exodus 20 then we would anticipate the Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot) was only eight days long as the time the Jews spent wondering in the wilderness, not 38 years concluding that Exodus 20 is just an analogy, not an equation.

"Orbiting Earth in the spaceship, I saw how beautiful our planet is. People, let us preserve and increase this beauty, not destroy it! "

― Yuri Gagarin

The first human in space, Mar 9, 1934-1968

The big bang is big, but you can forget the bang! Bang represents an explosion where there is chaos, disorder and destruction. To say the least the "big bang" label is not that at all although the nickname did stick. In truth, the cosmic "bang" is an immensely powerful yet carefully controlled and planned burst of creation. In an instant the universe unfurled in a controlled expansion in time, space, matter and energy along with the physical laws governing them all came into existence from a source beyond the cosmos. Doesn't this sound a little bit like when the heavens and earth suddenly appear?  "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Genesis 1:1

"No other characteristic of the universe is so well designed as this cosmic expansion. Mass density and the space-energy density must be fine-tuned to better than 1 part in 10^60 (60 zeros after the 1) and 1 part in 10^120 (120 zeros after the 1) in order to yield a universe of galaxies, stars and planets suitable for physical life." 

Lawrence M. Krauss

"End of the Age Problem and The case for the Cosmological Constant Revisited" 

Astrophysical Journal, pg. 501, 1998. 

• "By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible." Hebrews 11:3

The first theoretical evidence for a cosmic creation event dates back to 1916 when Albert Einstein noted that his field equations for general relativity predicted an expanding universe. Recognizing that such expansion implies a beginning, he altered his theory to conform to the common wisdom of his day, namely a belief in an eternal universe. His original theory of  the creation event (big bang) would threatened to overthrow evolutionary thinking because it leaned heavily on the availability of nearly infinite time for natural processes to bring about random assembly of a living thing. Einstein and most scientist have been upstaged by Isaiah, Job, Jeramiah and many other authors of the Bible. Just a few scripture examples below.

• "He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in." Isaiah 40:22

Isaiah paints a picture of God enthroned above, constantly exercising is creative power by continually stretching out of the heavens, with the added reference to the past completed act of God's spreading out of the heavens. This stretching out of the heavens as bot "finished" and "ongoing" matches the big bang theory.

• "Thus saithe the Lord, he that created the heavens, and stretched them out; he that spread forth the earth, and that which cometh out of it." Isaiah 42:5

The word created or " bārā’" in Hebrew definition is "bringing into existence something new, something that did not exist before. 

• "But God made the earth by his power; he founded the world by his wisdom
  and stretched out the heavens by his understanding." Jeramiah 10:12

• "If I have not made my covenant with day and night and established the laws of heaven and earth." Jeramiah 33:25

• "He alone stretches out the heavens and treads on the waves of the sea." Job 9:8 

According to the Big Bang Geometry model, all physics (dimensions, laws, constants, and equations of physics) were instantly created, designed, and finished so as to guarantee a continual cosmic expansion at exactly the right rates with respect to time to eventually provide for all the physical needs for human life. Other verses of support (Psalm 104:2, Isaiah 40:22, 42:5, 44:24, 51:13, Zechariah 12:1)

Big bang cosmology says that all the matter and energy of the universe are distributed on the three-dimensional surface of an expanding four-dimensional system. (an analogy in fewer dimensions would be the cities of the world being distributed on the two-dimensional surface of the three-dimensional Earth). Psalm 104:2 presents an apt metaphor: God "stretches out the heavens like a tent." Isaiah 40:22 echoes this word picture. Just as the material substance of a tent is in its surface, so too is the material substance of the universe confined to its surface.

“Astronomers now find they have painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos and on the earth. And they have found that all this happened as a product of forces they cannot hope to discover. That there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact.”"

― Robert Jastrow

American Astronomer, Planetary Physicist, NASA Scientist, Populist Author and Futurist

"The universe is made of stories, not of atoms."

― Muriel Rukeyser

Poet and Activist (15 Dec 1913-1980)

In 1948 Robert Dicke, a physics professor at Princeton University and atheist, was utterly opposed to the big bang creation event. Ironically, he played a crucial role in proving that we live in a big bang universe. He had formulated a calculation (signal to noise ration) to measure residual radiation. If there was a big bang universe, then there's going to be residual radiation left over from the cosmic creation event. The technology did not exist at that time to discover that radiation because the temperature that would need to be measured would be very low at 3°-5° Celsius above absolute zero kelvin or -273.15° Celsius. He really wanted to find a way to search for that radiation to prove the big bang event never happened. If we couldn't find the existence of radiation using his calculation, this would confirm his stance that the big bang creation model is wrong. It also would prove that the Christian perspective on the universe is wrong and it would strengthen his atheistic world view. In 1963 some of his graduate students discovered what he had written back in 1948, apparently Dicke had completely forgotten he wrote it. They informed him that the technology existed now and they could measure the radiation using the radiometer* that he had invented along with a telescope. This would tell us whether the big bang is right or wrong about the existence of residual radiation.

The team of graduate students (Jim Peebles, David Todd Wilkinson (microwave)) were busy constructing a small radio telescope and the plan was to place it on the roof of the astronomy building at the university to take measurements. There's radiation all over the sky so they didn't need  a telescope with a precise pencil beam to measure it. As they were finishing, two physicist, Penzias & Wilson (pictured with radio telescope), from Bell Labs in New Jersey called Dicke and said that they had built a radio telescope or horned radiometer (50 ft x 50 ft). This construct was actually Dicke's radiometer instrument that they used to measure the radiation. The famous part of the story is that they were finding excess radiation signals everywhere they looked in the sky. Dicke told them that you have already found what my students were looking for on the roof of the astronomy building. Later on Penzias & Wilson called Dicke back to tell him that what they found was the excess radiation left over from the cosmic creation event. The graduate students also confirmed that they had also found excess radiation. Dicke actually helped prove that the big bang cosmic creation event was in fact true. This monumental discovery was later published in the The Astrophysical Journal "Excess radiation discovered". The Big Bang cosmology has been further  validated during the 1989 NASA COBE Satellite Mission and the Bible said it first!

Since their discovery, there have been more precise temperature measurements using advance instruments like optical telescopes, infer-red and UV telescopes. Today, astronomers can view spectral line in distant galaxies between stars which tells them what is occurring in the interstellar mediums between stars. These interstellar mediums inside a galaxy were effected by the radiation left over during the cosmic creation event. looking a a distant galaxy is looking at an earlier epoch of the universe. So observing an interstellar medium seven billion light years away is essentially looking back in time at the universe  seven billion years ago. We would expect to see that the left over radiation from an event that happened seven billion years ago would be warmer and warmer as we move farther away because the universe is expanding and as it expands it cools off. If the universe is cooling down at temperatures we would expect from a creation event, this would be direct proof that we live in an expanding, Big bang cosmology says that the universe starts off infinitesimally small and near infinitely hot. As the universe expands it gets colder and colder under the laws of thermodynamics. Another direct method used would be to measure the abundance of elements that exist throughout history. Pictured are actual spectral line measurements (red dots) taken by astronomers using their optical telescopes of instiller medium of distant galaxies. The line measurements are of carbon and carbon monoxide spectral lines that are sensitive to temperature of cosmic microwave background radiation left over from the cosmic creation event. The hotter the temperatures the stronger the line. Less than a billion years before the creation event, we can confirm that the big bang predictive curve is verified by actual measurements. The most accurate measurement to date on the excess carbon radiation from the creation event was recorded by D.J. Fixwn in 2009: 916-920.

CMBR (carbon radiation) = To(1 + z), where To (temperature present time), z = redshift or the displacement of spectral lines, To = 2.72548 +-0.00057 °Kelvin

*A radiometer or roentgenometer is a device for measuring the radiant flux (power) of electromagnetic radiation.

"Nature's laws affirm instead of prohibit. If you violate her laws, you are your own prosecuting attorney, judge, jury, and hangman."  

― Luther Burbank

Horticulturist, 7 Mar 1849-1926

The four primary Biblical cosmology themes listed above leads to a very specific predictions about the universe which says if the entire universe is expanding, the laws of physics are constant and dominated by the constant law of decay then as the universe is becoming colder and colder by a predictable amount. Just like in the way a car engine works, as a car piston chamber expands, it gets colder and coder and when the chamber compresses, it becomes hotter which follows the 2nd law of Thermodynamics. Consequently, as the universe gets older and older, as it expands it cools down. 

Taking these 4 statements and knowing the age of the universe (13.8 billion years) from the beginning of creation we can produce a temperature curve to the left (11 data points). This is exactly what the Bible predicted about the cooling down of our universe. No other holy book makes these detailed statements about the features and history of the universe or is true in everything it says about the origin and structure of the universe thousands of years before science even had a clue.

Scientist have now determined that the difference between the velocity of gravity waves and the velocity of light is < 3 x 10^-15. They agree to at least 14 decimal places and are basically identical. With gravity wave we have gravity particles. They were also able to determine that the mass of a graviton is < 3.14 x 10^-59 kilograms or at least 5.33 x 10^-31 less than the mass of a proton. This was was a key prediction by the particle physicist in the creation particle model in that the mass of the graviton would have the least mass of any of the fundamental particles. It's crucial for there to be life to have that small of a graviton mass. The recent findings are a huge prediction of the cosmic and particle creation models which align with the Biblical creation model. This allows the cosmic creation model to be consistent with our particle creation model. 

"Arranging the universe as we think it is arranged would have required a miracle…. It seems an external agent intervened in cosmic history for reasons of its own."

― Lisa Dyson, Matthew Kleban & Leonard Susskind

Quoted in Ball, Phillip. “Is Physics Watching Over Us?”, August 14, 2002 

Science has only recently, as of June 2022, discovered where all the periodic table elements originated. All of the Periodic Table elements come from ordinary dark matter. The majority of these elements are necessary for the existence of life. Many of them are critical in order to support an advanced civilization like ours also allowing the possibility of redemption for billions of human beings. The universes size or mass determines which elements show up in the periodic table. If the universe is more massive we get one set of elements and if it's less massive we get a different set. This helps answer the question as to why our universe is so vast having 200 trillion "useless" galaxies and 10 trillion, trillion stars because we need all of them in order to produce one planet with a periodic table of 118 elements to support advanced life. 

In the big bang creation beginning the universe is infinitesimally small and nearly infinitely hot. After the universe is created it expands and begins to get cooler and cooler, it continues to expand based on the second law of thermodynamics.

Given the laws of physics that God gave to govern the universe; gravity, thermodynamics and electromagnetism, the universe must be the precise mass that it is in order to produce all the elements essential for life. The mass of the universe determines what elements in the periodic table are formed. If God made the universe slightly less massive than its current size, then the only elements existing or formed would be hydrogen or possibly hydrogen and helium. It's in the first few minutes of the Big Bang creation event that the universe goes through a temperature window where hydrogen can be fused into helium and how much helium comes out of that hydrogen determines what element will be fused in future stars. If there is less than 24% helium from the primordial hydrogen, the future stars will not be able to use that hydrogen and helium to make any heavier elements. 

The greater the cosmic mass density, the more hydrogen is fused to helium during the first few minutes after cosmic origin. If we make the universe more massive then so much helium is fused from the primordial hydrogen during the first 3-4 minutes of the existence of the universe that the future stars being super rich with helium and very quickly converts all the hydrogen and helium into elements heavier than manganese like iron. This makes everything else heavier. We know the age of the universe using the following equation:

Universe Age = Size / Expansion Rate

It takes 24% helium and 76% hydrogen along with three successive generations of stars forming, burning and dying out to get the full Periodic Table of elements which also takes around 13.8 billion years to occur in order for humans to exist and thrive. Nearly a quarter of the elements in the table or half the elements heavier than iron were formed when two neutron stars merged together forming a black hole. This is the first time astronomers we able to measure both the velocity of light and the velocity of the gravitational waves using gravity wave telescope. They were able to determine that the difference between the velocity of gravity waves and the velocity of  of light was less than 3 x 10^-15 meaning that they agree to at least 14 decimal places. This proves that both velocities were the same which before it was always assumed, but not provable. The point being that by observing various neutron stars merged affirms the particle creation model that is consistent with the cosmic creation model. 

 In both cases above the elements essential for life like oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, sodium, phosphorus or potassium are missing without fine-tuning. The parameters for the possibility of life are so narrow in fact that if the only factor governing the expansion of the universe was the mass of the universe we would need to fine-tune the total quantity of the mass to a within one part in a quadrillion (10^15), quadrillion (10^15), quadrillion (10^15), quadrillion (10^15) or  1 x 10^60. It turns out that the fine-tuning of the mass isn't that extraordinary, although still extraordinary because we now know there is a second factor governing the expansion of the universe which is dark energy. In order to get life in the universe we would need to fine-tune dark energy to one part in 10^122. If you want human beings or even microbes you would need to fine-tune the universe to precisely the mass it is today and it's also important to fine-tune how far apart the stars and galaxies are so that the size of the universe must also be fine-tuned. Another factor to think about is how much fine-tuning was necessary to get the correct amounts of each element in the periodic table, especially those essential for supporting life.

There are only 22 of the 118 elements (94 of the elements explained without human intervention) essential for supporting life. Many of the 22 elements are called "vital poisons" meaning too much or too little of them can kill you. These elements need to be at the just the right levels to sustain life of Earth. A number of Astronomers have written papers on this topic making the point that it takes the full age of the universe in order for stars to produce these elements in such a way that we even have the possibility of having a planet with all 22 elements at just the right levels. Moreover, if you want that life to have global civilization there are many additional elements needed to be available at just the right levels. Since there is fine-tuning of too much verses too little of the essential elements there is also a narrow window of time required, so we can't go to far into the future or we would end up outside of the windows of the necessary abundance levels. Astronomers predict up to one billions years in the future.

This means that we humans are living in the history of the universe at the minimum time necessary to get all the vital elements necessary to launch a global, high-tech civilization. Maybe there could be intelligent life after us elsewhere in the universe, but not before us.

"A commonsense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question."

― Sir Fred Hoyle 

British Astronomer, Cambridge

Engineering & Science, Nov 1981, p. 12

Known for coining the phrase "Big Bang"

Young-Earth Christians believe that the universe, earth and creation occurred in a literal six day period. This is in direct contrast to what we see in the fossil record and in the law of decay. Uniformitarianism states that the same natural laws and processes that operate in our present-day scientific observations have always operated in the universe in the past and apply everywhere in the universe. Therefore, the laws of physics do not change as declared in the Bible over and over again. Every young earth model depends on radically altering the laws of physics in order to promote the idea. The laws of nature are based on constant physics and it's how science measures the past. Since these laws do not change then we can only conclude that the Earth is billions of years old.

• "I the Lord do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed." Malachi 3:6

•  "God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind." Numbers 23:19

• "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever." Hebrews 13:8

The only way skeptics can defend an evolutionary model is if they make the Earths age millions of billions of years old. There is a lot more time required to make it work since we now know the Earth's 4.54 billion years old and the universe to be 13.8 billion. You would need thousands of billions of years more to even consider a nonsensical, evolutionary model.

Science measures the decay rates to determination of the age or date of organic matter from the relative proportions of the carbon isotopes carbon-12 and carbon-14 that it contains. The ratio between them changes as radioactive carbon-14 decays telling us the age of the organic matter. 

I believe an event like the great flood of Noah could cause the radiocarbon decay rates to reset. The bible says that much of the water came from the crust of the earth, not just rain. Something like this would definitely impact carbon isotope dating.

•  "In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. 12 And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights." Genesis 6:9-12

• "Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky." Genesis 8:2

Atomic Clock Reset

"There has been in recent years the horrible realization that radio decay rates are not as constant as previously thought, nor are they immune to environmental influences. And this could mean that the atomic clocks are reset during some global disaster, and events which brought the Mesozoic to a close may not be 65 million years ago but, rather, within the age and memory of man."

― Frederic B. Jueneman, FAIC

‘Secular catastrophism’, Industrial Research and Development, June 1982, p. 21. 

The Hebrew word raqia' is a noun meaning expanse or visible part of the sky (lexical definition); used in Genesis 1:14-20, Psalm 19:1, 150:1, Ezekiel 1:22-26, 10:1, Daniel 12:3. The Hebrew word natah means the stretching out or spread out of the universe. Isaiah 42:5, 44:24 makes the distinction between the atmospheric spreading out over the surface of the earth (raqia) and the cosmic expansion of the universe (natah). Many translations will use the definition of natah and not distinguish the difference. There is no mention of a metallic dome in these verses, only the expanse.

• "The heavens tell of the glory of God; And their expanse declares the work of His hands." Psalm 19:1

There is a new theological trend on the idea that all the nations around ancient Israel and Israel believed that the Earth was flat, floating on a vast ocean of water, covered by a large metallic dome surrounded by water (pictured left) where the stars, Sun and Moon where on the inside surface the dome. Theologians overlook the fact that the ancients had mathematical tools for measuring the distances to the Sun, Moon and stars. The tools weren't very accurate, about half the distances of what we know as true today, so instead of the sun being 93 million miles away they were calculation 40 million miles away. The ancient civilizations were highly advance in science and a good example would be the Egyptians or Romans. There is no mention of this dome description in any of the Hebrew literature or even in their fantasy literature. This is although an accurate description of the universe found in the ancient near eastern fantasy literature, but not in their scientific or historic literature. This fantasy literature is promoting a political objective The ancient near east fantasy literature is promoting the idea that humans are to serve multiple God's who created us and the universe. This is used as an analogy of how the nobility should be served by the rest of the population and how the nobility has the attributes of deity that is not shared by the rest of the population. Ancient fantasy literature is no different than modern fantasy literature and should not be treated as reality.

The New International Version (NIV) Bible used the word "expanse" in 1978 then replaced it with the translation "vault" in 2011 which has helped fuel this inaccurate theory which has made the verse appear to be like the near east description. This comparison is nothing but fantasy literature that modern day Theologians are treating as scientific or historical literature. The English Standard Version (ESV) is replacing the NIV because it doesn't have the NIV translation changes issues.

• "And God said, “Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water.” 7 So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the expanse “sky.” Genesis 1:6-8, 1978/1984 NIV

• "And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” 7 So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the vault “sky.” Genesis 1:6-8, 2011  NIV

Nowhere in the Bible is there a verse describing a metal dome over a flat earth. Theologians like to jump to the word for raqia' whose verbal root is rq' means "spreading out" These words have completely different definitions. The text Theologians will most frequently cite that we need to translate raqia' as a metal dome or solid dome over a flat earth is Job 37 because the verbal root uses it as some kind of mirror. The verse below is talking about God spreading out the atmosphere over the earth. The verse is not using raqia', it is using the verbal root rq'. The verse then uses a metaphorical text, "hard as a mirror of cast bronze.", which typically us the words "like or "as". The metaphor is explained in Job 37:21 as how bright the light is once the sky is clear from atmospheric haze. Theologians target this one verse to say that this is why we must translate Genesis 1  from "expanse" to the word "vault" or "dome" when the verse is talking about "rq'", not "raqia'". Ancient used the term "mirror of cast bronze" because it was the most reflective surface they were able to manufacture at that time which would hurt your eye looking at it similar to looking at the sun or clear sky.

• "Can you join Him in spreading out (rq') the skies, hard as a mirror of cast bronze? " Job 37:18

"Whenever a physicist (or biologist) says something came from nothing, just ask them what kind of nothing are you taking about?"   

― Hugh Ross 

Astrophysicist, Skeptics Forum, 2018