This is the text for lessons in the Science and Religion Adult Sunday School series at St. Francis of Assisi Episcopal Church in Chapin, SC, April 6-May 18, 2008.
Religious Notes
Genesis 7:17-24, 8:1-5 “For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth. The waters …rose greatly on the earth and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered…Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain stopped falling from the sky. The water receded steadily from the earth…the tops of the mountains became visible.”
Psalms 24:1 — The earth is the Lord’s, and all its fullness, The world and those who dwell therein.
Psalms 24:2 — For He has founded it upon the seas, And established it upon the waters.
Psalms 33:7 — He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap; He lays up the deep in storehouses.
Psalms 46:2, 3 – Therefore we will not fear, though the earth be moved, and though the mountains be toppled into the depths of the sea; Though its waters rage and foam, and though the mountains tremble at it tumult.
Psalms 66:3 “He turned the sea into dry land, so that they went through the water on foot, and there we rejoiced in him.”
Psalms 74:17 — You have set all the borders of the earth; You have made summer and winter.
Psalms 90:2 — Before the mountains were brought forth, Or ever You had formed the earth and the world, Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.
Psalms 95:4 — In His hand are the deep places of the earth; The heights of the hills are His also.
Psalms 95:5 — The sea is His, for He made it; And His hands formed the dry land.
Joel 2:23-27 – O children of Zion, be glad and rejoice in the Lord your God; for he has given the early rain for your vindication, he has poured down for you abundant rain, the early and the later rain, as before. The threshing floors shall be full of grain, the vats shall overflow with wine and oil. I will repay you for the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent against you. You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God, who has dealt wondrously with you.”
Amos 4:13 — For behold, He who forms mountains, And creates the wind, Who declares to man what his thought is, And makes the morning darkness, Who treads the high places of the earth; The LORD God of hosts is His name.
Amos 9:6 — He who builds His layers in the sky, And has founded His strata in the earth; Who calls for the waters of the sea, And pours them out on the face of the earth; The LORD is His name.
Prayers of the People for Lent – “At your command all things came to be: the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this fragile earth, our island home.”
In the mid-1600s, an Anglican Cleric, Bishop Ussher, attempted to calculate the age of the Earth by examining the lineages of Old Testament families and assigning a period of time to each generation within these family lineages. By his calculation, the Earth was created on the night preceding the 23rd of October, 4004 BC.
Science Text
Origin and Early History of the Earth System (2)
The term “Earth System” came into prominent use in 1986 after publication of a report by NASA entitled “Earth System Science: A Program for Global Change”. Earth System Science regards the Earth as a system within the Solar System. The Earth System is considered to be separate but interacting sub-systems – the solid Earth, the atmosphere, the hydrosphere and the biosphere.
Supernova Explosion of a Pre-Existing Star and Formation of a Nebula
In the lesson on the Origin and Evolution of the Universe, we learned that even in the most massive first-cycle stars, elements only as heavy as iron can be produced. The heavier elements found in Earth, such as uranium and plutonium, must be explained by some other process. Supernova explosions provide us not only with an explanation of the end-stage of a very massive star; they also allow us to explain the origin of atoms of more massive elements than iron. It is now thought that when a supernova explosion occurs, the violence produces enough heat and pressure for the rapid capture of neutrons by progressively more massive atoms than iron. This process is thought to be the origin of the heavy elements found in the Earth and the rest of our Solar System.
Origin of the Solar System (3)
Because of the presence of elements more massive than iron on the Earth and on other planets, and because the Earth has been accurately determined by radioactive dating to be only about 4.6 billion years old, the formation of our Sun and Solar System are now thought to be such a “second-generation” event, composed in large part of material ejected from an earlier supernova.
The Solar System just prior to approximately 4.6BYA was thought to have existed as a nebula, or dust cloud, that was generated by a supernova. This nebula is thought to have begun contracting due to gravitational attraction between bits of matter. The bulk of the mass of the nebula contracted to form the Sun, while subsidiary accumulations led to the formation of the planets, including our Earth.
Origin and Early History of the Earth System – The Solid Earth (4, 5, 6, 7)
The early Earth is thought to have been both chemically homogeneous and physically. However, it is now known that the Earth is now composed of layers, the crust, which has a highly variable composition consisting of igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks, a mantle, which we think is compositionally like certain meteorites, more uniform compositionally, but which is more dense than the crust, and core, which we think is compositionally similar to another kind of meteorite and composed primarily of elemental iron and nickel.
The best explanation for this layering is that the Earth must have undergone one or more periods of melting, almost certainly due to heat being released by gravitational energy during the coalescence of the Earth. Further, there must have been a significant amount of radioactive elements contained within this early Earth. These forms of heat energy would not have dissipated completely and are thought to have led to melting.
During the time the Earth was melted, the more dense elements contracted into the core, mantle and primordial crust. The Earth’s primordial crust was chemically similar to today’s crust, with some exceptions. The primordial crust was certainly much more compositionally uniform than the crust is today. There were probably no “oceanic” or “continental” components to the primordial crust as there are today. The primordial crust was also much smaller in volume than is the crust today. Several processes are still actively altering the Earth’s crust.
Origin and Early History of the Earth System – the Earth’s Atmosphere (8)
During the “primary differentiation” of the Earth System, the Earth’s primordial atmosphere was formed. While the more dense elements contracted into the solid Earth, the less dense, gaseous elements were released. Hydrogen and helium escaped from the solid Earth into space.
The volcanic activity in the mantle, early in the history of the Earth System that produces magma for the crust also produces a significant amount gaseous material, primarily water vapor, carbon dioxide, nitrogen and sulfur that accumulate as the Earth’s atmosphere. Continuing volcanic activity in the mantle contributes to a changing composition of the Earth’s atmosphere over geologic time.
Notice that there has been no mention of molecular oxygen, O2, in the atmosphere. That is because O2 only became an abundant component of the atmosphere approximately 2 billion years ago. The process by which O2 became abundant will be discussed in a later lesson on the origin of life.
Origin and Early History of the Earth System – the Earth’s Hydrosphere (9)
The primordial hydrosphere formed shortly after the formation of the primordial atmosphere. As noted above, volcanic activity began releasing much water to the Earth’s atmosphere early in the history of the Earth System. In that early time, the solid Earth was so hot that most of the water remained in the atmosphere as water vapor. When the solid Earth became cool enough, some to the water vapor in the atmosphere condensed to form the Earth’s oceans. Continuing volcanic activity in the mantle throughout geologic time has contributed progressively more water to the oceans.
But how did the oceans become so salty? Early geologists were of the opinion that the dissolved salts in the ocean must have originated on the solid Earth through chemical weathering of the Earth’s crust. This dissolved material then was thought to be transported to the ocean by rivers. However, it is now thought that the salinity of the oceans is primarily due to gases released by volcanic activity. By this process the salinity of the oceans would be uniform over time. Inputs of salt compounds are thought to have changed proportionally over time with the volume of the ocean.
Evolution of the Earth System (10, 11)
Probably the most important changes that the Earth system has undergone are those due to the theory of plate tectonics. Plate tectonics is actually an outgrowth of the old theory of continental drift, which was based on the complementary nature of the shapes of the continents, e.g. South America and Africa, and other evidence. The theory of continental drift was eventually discarded primarily because there was no physically viable explanation of how and why the continents might have moved. In plate tectonics, we now believe that movement of pieces of the crust and uppermost mantle, plates, takes place due in large part to convective currents in the deep mantle. As these plates move, they interact with each other, producing folded and faulted mountains like the Himalayas and Appalachians, volcanic mountains on the Earth, e.g., the Andes, and in the oceans, e.g., Aleutians, earthquakes, deep oceanic trenches, e.g., the Peru-Chile Trench, mid-ocean ridges, e.g., the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and major faults, e.g., the San Andeas in California.
A second process changing the Earth’s surface is the partial melting of the upper mantle, caused by plate tectonics, that results in the production of lava such as that which is forming the Hawaiian Islands. Other processes include meteorite impacts and surface processes like weathering, erosion and deposition of sediment.
Reflective Questions, with Answers
1. How is the Earth like a system?
Earth System Science regards the Earth as a system within the Solar System because the Earth consists of the solid Earth, the hydrosphere, the atmosphere and the biosphere. These components of the whole Earth are separate but interacting sub-systems.
2. Does the scientific concept of the Earth System, and how and when it came into being conflict with the teachings in Genesis about the Creative Week?
As was the case in the lesson dealing with the origin of the universe, there is a reasonable correlation between Biblical teachings and science. In Genesis 1, it is inferred that the existence of water and sky predate the existence of land. The use of the word “sky” in the Bible is not necessarily what we think of as the atmosphere; rather it is probably the open space of the early universe. There is no specific discussion of the atmosphere in the Bible, and we might infer from that Moses did not differentiate the atmosphere of the Earth from open space of the Universe. Furthermore, it is not clear what is implied in the Bible by the early existence of water. There is no indication that Moses was talking specifically about the oceans of the Earth, but this is still an area of uncertainty. In Genesis 1:9, there is an implication that the oceans and land (solid Earth) formed simultaneously. We now believe that the Earth solidified, melted, and coalesced into solid Earth and the atmosphere, followed very soon by the oceans, as soon as the Earth cooled sufficiently.
3. How old is the Earth?
Scientific evidence is very strong that while the age of the Universe is about 15 billion years old, the age of the Earth and our Solar System are “only” about 4.6 billion years old.
Many, but not all Creationists are what we call “Young Earth Creationists”. These people interpret the creation stories in Genesis as historical and scientific accounts about the way God created the universe. They believe that the Earth and the whole cosmos were created in six literal twenty-four hour days some 6000 years ago, based primarily on the work of Bishop Ussher. They reject any scientific evidence that does not fit their biblical interpretations.
4. How do the scientifically determined age of the Earth System and the on-going evolution of the Earth System complement the biblical doctrine of “continuous creation”?
In addition to the fact that the Universe and the Solar System came into being billions of years apart, suggesting an evolution of the Universe, the fact that Earth contains elements heavier than iron has been explained by the Earth and the Solar System being formed from the death of a pre-existing star that died by means of a super-nova explosion.
Not only does the Universe continue to evolve, so does the Earth. We can infer from the layering of the Earth that it underwent an early stage of melting or near-melting. We can also actually observe continuous changes to the earth, our Moon and other planets, e.g. weathering and erosion, changes related to volcanism and earthquakes, and impacts of extra-terrestrial objects.
Early church theologians developed the doctrine of continuous creation (in Latin, creatio continua), which means, first, that the creation is continually upheld and sustained through God’s Word and Holy Spirit, for were the Trinity to withdraw divine power, the creation would cease to exist. Second, it means that the creation is not a once-and-for-all act: the universe comes more and more into being over time. Just as the phrase “creation out of nothing” expresses God’s transcendence or Otherness from creation, so “continuous creation” expresses God’s immanence or intimate Presence within creation. It means that God continually calls forth, dwells in, and provides for creation.
