History of the creation of the world. Six Days of Creation

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The story of the creation of the world in the Bible is known to almost every person, even those who do not particularly believe in the Lord. The depth of such knowledge lies solely in the power of faith and the study of the details of the scriptures. Some of the information is passed down to us from generation to generation. For example, we all know that on the last day of the week it is necessary to drop all business and rest.

Creation of the world by the Lord

There is no designation of the exact year of the creation of the world according to the Bible, but there are references that the first man was created 7509 years ago. Since this book indicates that the creation of the planet took place at the same time, it can be assumed that the dates are very close. When reading this story, we learn that all the miracles of the Lord were divided into several days:

• In the first He created the light and separated it from the darkness.
• On the second day He made a firmament and called it heaven. He placed it between the water that was on the ground and above it.
• The third day was spent for Him to discover the seas, oceans, other waters, and also the continents. Even then, He made the whole plant world in order to somehow initiate the organic world on the surface.
• On the fourth, two heavenly bodies were produced, which became known as the sun and the moon. After them, the stars appeared.
• The fifth day He spent creating birds, fish, and reptiles. but all the rest - did the next day.
• The sixth day was also marked by the birth of the first people. The man was made in the likeness of God from the dust of the earth, but the woman was made from the rib of a man, in order to obey and obey him in everything. They settled them in the Garden of Eden, from where they were eventually expelled for disobedience.
• The last day, the Almighty decided to just rest and contemplate what He had done.

Here is a brief description of the 7 days of the creation of the world in the Bible, everyone can find.

Creation history and evolution

The description of this creation is described in the Book of Genesis. The statement of this fact is attributed to Moses. It is the first narrative that speaks of the creation of the world according to the Bible by day. This text occupies the first and second chapters of the book. The narrative is in the form of a description of the working week. A lot of us think that the last day is Sunday. But here many of us are mistaken. Saturday is indicated as a day off.

Scientists note that the earth was originally unsettled and empty. It was covered in darkness and in order for life to appear on it, some more time had to pass.

But not all scientists were of the opinion that the creation of the world was the work of the Lord. Atheists who are quite skeptical about this issue. They compare the creation of the world according to the Bible and the theory of evolution and find big differences in them. A large amount of research has been done, which tends more to the point of view that life on earth appeared after some changes, but not God's intervention.

They do not deny the possibility of something higher, but it is unlikely that this somehow influenced the development of life on earth. In the natural sciences, the origin of life on the planet had a slightly different development. It is in connection with the big steps in the field of knowledge of the world that the discussion of these two warring camps has become somewhat aggravated.

The friction on this issue has been going on for decades and will continue for a long time to come. Scientists will defend their point of view, and believers will assert strongly about the hand of the Lord, which he applied to this matter.

How it relates to this fact is purely personal. But we should not forget that no matter how much knowledge we have and how far progress would go, sometimes it is worth bowing before the greatness of the miracle of the Creator.

May the Lord keep you!

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. The earth was formless and empty, and darkness was over the deep, and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters.

(Gen 1, 1-2).

The biblical doctrine of the creation of the world is briefly called six days. Day means day. In 1823, the Anglican priest George Stanley Faber (1773-1854) advanced the day-epoch theory. This opinion has absolutely no basis. In Hebrew to express words indefinite period of time or era there is a concept olam. Word yom in Hebrew always means day, days but never period of time. The rejection of a literal understanding of the day greatly distorts the biblical teaching about the creation of the world. If we take a day as an epoch, then how to determine evening And morning? How to apply the blessing of the seventh day and rest in it to the age? After all, the Lord commanded rest on the seventh day of the week - Saturday, because He Himself rested: and God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it, for in it he rested from all his works(Gen 2, 3). The Lord created plants on the third day, and the sun, moon and other luminaries on the fourth. If we accept the idea of ​​"day - epoch", it turns out that for a whole epoch, plants grew without sunlight.

The Holy Fathers understood day the first chapter of the book of Genesis literally. Saint Irenaeus of Lyon: "Restoring this day in Himself, the Lord came to suffer on the day before the Sabbath - that is, on the sixth day of creation, on which man was created, through His suffering giving him a new creation, that is (liberation) from death." Saint Ephrem the Syrian: "No one should think that the six-day creation is an allegory." Saint Basil the Great: « And there was evening, and there was morning, one day ... determines the measure of day and night and combines into one daily time, because twenty-four hours fill the duration of one day, if by day we mean also night. Saint John of Damascus: “From the beginning of a day to the beginning of another day is one day, for the Scripture says: and there was evening and there was morning, one day».

How, then, did the alternation of day and night take place before the creation of the luminaries, which appear on the fourth day? St. Basil the Great writes: “Then, not by the movement of the sun, but by the fact that the primitive light, to a measure determined by God, then overflowed, then again contracted, day occurred and night followed” (Shestodnev. Conversation 2).

The Book of Genesis begins with a description of the majestic works of God - the creation of the world in six days. The Lord created the Universe with innumerable luminaries, the earth with its seas and mountains, man and the entire animal and plant world. The biblical revelation about the creation of the world rises above all existing cosmogonies of other religions, just as truth rises above any myth. No religion, no philosophical doctrine could rise to the superior idea of ​​creation out of nothing: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

God is self-sufficient and absolutely complete. For His being He requires nothing and needs nothing. The only reason for the creation of the world was the perfect Love of God. St. John of Damascus writes: “The good and most good God was not content with the contemplation of Himself, but out of excess of goodness, He wanted something to happen that in the future would benefit from His good deeds and be part of His goodness.”

The first to be created were incorporeal spirits - Angels. Although the Scriptures do not contain a story about the creation of the angelic world, there is no doubt that the angels by their nature belong to the created world. This view is based primarily on a clear biblical understanding of God as the almighty Creator who laid the foundation for everything that exists. Everything has a beginning, only God has no beginning. Some holy fathers see an indication of the creation of the invisible world of Angels in the words God created the sky (Gen 1, 1). In confirmation of this idea, St. Philaret (Drozdov) notes that, according to the biblical narrative, the physical heaven was created on the second and fourth days.

primordial the earth was unsettled And empty. Matter, created from nothing, was at first disordered and covered with darkness. Darkness was an inevitable consequence of the absence of light, which was not created as an independent element. Further, the writer Moses writes that The Spirit of God hovered over the water(Gen 1, 2). Here we see an indication of the creative and revitalizing participation in the creation of the third Person of the Holy Trinity - the Holy Spirit. Extremely short and precise definition - everything is from the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. The water mentioned in the above verse is the most important element, without which life is impossible. In the Holy Gospel, water is a symbol of the life-giving and saving teaching of Jesus Christ. In the life of the Church, water has a special significance, being the substance of the Sacrament of Baptism.

First day of creation

And God said: let there be light. And there was light... And God separated the light from the darkness. And God called the light day, and the darkness night. And there was evening and there was morning: one day(Gen 1:3-5).

By divine command arose light. From further words: and God separated the light from the darkness we see that the Lord did not destroy the darkness, but only established its periodic change with light to restore and preserve the strength of man and every creature. This wisdom of God is sung by the Psalmist: You spread darkness and there is night: during it all the animals of the forest roam; lions roar for prey and ask God for food for themselves. The sun rises, [and] they gather and lie down in their lairs; A man goes out to his work and to his work until evening. How many are your works, O Lord!(Ps 103:20-24). Poetic expression and there was evening and there was morning ends with a description of the creative affairs of each of the six days. The very word day the saints understood literally.

Light was created by the Divine word possessing omnipotent creative power: for He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it appeared(Ps 32:9). The Holy Fathers see here a mysterious reference to the second Person of the Holy Trinity - the Son of God Jesus Christ, whom the apostle calls Word and at the same time says: Everything came into being through Him, and without Him nothing came into being that came into being.(Jn 1:3).

When describing the first day, the first placed evening, and then morning. For this reason, among the Jews in biblical times, the day began with the evening. This order was preserved in the worship of the New Testament Church.

Second day of creation

And God created the firmament...<...>and called ... the firmament sky(Gen 1, 7, 8) and placed the sky between the water that was on the earth and the water above the earth.

On the second day God created physical sky. Word firmament the word of the Hebrew original is transmitted, meaning prostration, for the ancient Jews metaphorically compared the firmament with a tent: spread out the heavens like a tent(Ps 103:2).

When describing the second day, it is also said about water, which is not only on earth, but also in the atmosphere.

Third day of creation

And God gathered the water under the sky into one place and opened the dry land. And he called the dry land the earth, and the collection of waters he called the seas. And God commanded the earth to bring forth vegetation, grass, and trees bearing fruit. And the earth was covered with vegetation. The Lord separated the water from the land(see: Gen 1:9-13).

On the third day were created oceans, seas, lakes and rivers, as well as continents and islands. This later delighted the Psalmist: He collected, like heaps, sea waters, laid abysses in storehouses. Let all the earth fear the Lord; let all who live in the world tremble before him, for he spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it appeared(Ps 32:7-9).

On the same day God created all vegetable world. This was fundamentally new: God laid the foundation for an organic life on the ground.

Produce Plant World Creator commanded the earth. St. Basil the Great says: “Then the verb and this first command became, as it were, a natural certain law and remained in the earth for subsequent times, giving it the power to give birth and bear fruit” (St. Basil the Great. Shestodnev. Conversation 5).

The book of Genesis says that the earth brought forth grass, grass, and trees yielding seed. according to their kind. The Holy Fathers attached fundamental importance to this, for it points to the constancy of everything created by God: “What at the first creation arose from the earth, it is observed to this day, through the preservation of the family by the succession of succession” (St. Basil the Great. Shestodnev. Conversation 5). As you can see, the third day was devoted to the dispensation of our planet.

And God saw that it was good (Gen 1:12). The writer expresses in poetic language the idea that God creates wisely and perfectly.

Fourth day of creation

And God said that lights should appear in the firmament of heaven, to sanctify the earth and to separate the day from the night. According to the created luminaries, the calendar and time will now be counted. And the luminaries appeared: the sun, the moon and the stars(See: Gen 1:14-18).

In the description of the fourth day, we see the creation of the luminaries, their purpose and their differences. From the text of the Bible we learn that the light was created on the second day before the luminaries, so that, according to the explanation of St. Basil the Great, unbelievers would not consider the sun to be the only source of light. One God is the Father of lights (see: James 1, 17).

The creation of the luminaries had three purposes: first, to illuminate earth and everything on it; a distinction is made between daytime (sun) and nighttime (moon and stars) luminaries. Secondly, to separate day from night; distinguish four season, arrange time with calendar and keep track of the calendar. Third, serve for the signs of the end times; This is stated in the New Testament: the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of heaven will be shaken; then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven; and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn and see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory(Mt 24:29-30).

Fifth day of creation

On the fifth day, the Lord created the first living creatures living in water and flying in the air. And God said, Let the water bring forth reptiles, living creatures; and let the birds fly over the earth. So the inhabitants of the waters appeared, aquatic animals, insects, reptiles and fish appeared, and birds flew through the air(see: Gen 1:20-21).

At the beginning of the fifth day God turns His creative word to water ( let the water bring forth), while on the third day - to the ground. Word water is taken in this place in a broader sense, denoting not only ordinary water, but also the atmosphere, which the sacred writer also calls water.

On the fifth day, God creates a higher form of life than plants. By God's command, representatives of the water element appeared (fish, whales, reptiles, amphibians and other inhabitants of the waters), as well as birds, insects and all living in the air.

The Creator creates the first beings of each kind (“according to kind”). He blesses them to be fruitful and multiply.

The sixth day of creation

On the sixth day of creation, God created the animals that live on earth, and man, in His own image and likeness.(See: Genesis 1, 24-31).

Description sixth creative day the prophet Moses begins with the same words as the previous days (third and fifth): yes will produce... God commands the earth to create all animals of the earth (living soul according to its kind). God created everything in a certain sequence increasing perfection.

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his face breath of life and man became a living soul (cf. Gen 1:26-28).

The last, as the crown of creation, was created man. It was created in a special way. The Holy Fathers first of all note that his creation was preceded by a Divine Council between all the Persons of the Most Holy Trinity: let's make a man. Man is distinguished from the whole created world and by the way the Lord creates him. Although his bodily composition was taken from the earth, the Lord does not command the earth to produce man (as was the case with other creatures), but Himself creates him directly. The psalmist says, addressing the Creator: Your hands created me and arranged me(Ps 118:73).

God said that it's not good for a person to be alone.

And the Lord God brought a deep sleep upon the man; and when he fell asleep, he took one of his ribs, and covered the place with flesh. And the Lord God made a wife out of the rib taken from the man, and brought her to the man(Gen 2:21-22).

The Lord, of course, could create not only one married couple, but several and produce from them the entire human race, but He wanted all the people of the earth to be one in Adam. Even Eve was taken from her husband. The Apostle Paul says: From one blood He made the whole human race to dwell on all the face of the earth.(Acts 17:26). And so we are all relatives.

At the dawn of human history, God established marriage as a permanent life union between a man and a woman. He blessed him and sealed him with the closest bonds: will be one flesh(Gen 2:24).

By creating the human body, God blown into his face breath of life and man became a living soul. The most important distinguishing feature of a person is that his the soul is godlike. God said: Let us make man in Our image [and] in Our likeness(Gen 1:26). About what is the image of God in man, we said earlier. When God created man, He brought to him all the animals and birds, man gave them all names. The naming of names was a sign of man's dominion over all creation.

With the creation of man, the six-day creation of the world ends. the God made the world perfect. The hand of the Creator did not bring any evil into him. This doctrine of the original goodness of all creation is a sublime theological truth.

At the end of time will the perfection of the world has been restored. According to the testimony of the seer, the holy Apostle John the Theologian, there will be a new heaven and a new Earth(see: Revelation 21:1).

Seventh day

And God finished on the seventh day His works which He did, and rested on the seventh day from all His works which He did(Gen 2:2).

Having finished the creation of the world, God rested from His works. The writer here uses a metaphor, for God does not need rest. This indicates the secret of the true rest that awaits people in eternal life. Before the onset of this blessed time, already in earthly life we ​​see a prototype of this state - the rest of the blessed seventh day, which in the Old Testament was Saturday, and for Christians is a day Sunday.

Creation Science: How old is the Earth according to biblical texts? What evidence is there for the correctness of the Christian belief in the creation of the world? All about it in our material!

Creation Science

Here it is said that the originally unified world ocean, which covered the entire earth, broke up into separate basins, separated by land. The appearance of continents and seas on the face of the Earth was of great importance in the history of the development of our planet, but it happened in such a distant past that no traces of this event remained in the geological record.

In modern science, the question of the origin of the hydrosphere, as well as the atmosphere, is the object of mutually exclusive hypotheses, which are based not on direct geological data, but on certain cosmogonic constructions and general views on the origin of the Earth. For a geologically observable period of time, there are no data that allow one to admit a noticeable increase in the volume of the hydrosphere, which V. I. Vernadsky drew attention to. If this position is correct, then it should be assumed that the land appeared only as a result of a long process of geological development of our planet, expressed in the differentiation of its solid shells into oceanic depressions that contained the bulk of surface water. Thus, modern scientific data do not contradict the picture drawn by the book of Genesis, but one has to be surprised, if one denies its divine inspiration, that the writer of a people who hardly see the sea attached such great importance to its water shell in the development of the Earth.

Bible and geology

We do not consider questions about the causes of the origin of oceans and continents, mountains and plains in this essay, since none of them contradicts the Bible. Another thing is important for us now - a comparative analysis of the sequence of creations according to the Bible and the sequence of the appearance of various types of the material world in the light of modern scientific and natural knowledge.

These verses say that the inanimate nature, at the command of God, produced the living nature in the form of plants, which thus came into being before the animals. So, already at the relatively early stages of the development of the Earth, the plant world reached a significant diversity and developed not only in water, but also covered the land.

There are no traces left of the very first stages of life in the geological record, so we have to confine ourselves to general considerations and conjectures. It is generally accepted that life originated in the oceans, but G. S. Osborne and L. S. Berg (1946) believe that the first stages of life took place on land, in swampy and damp places. According to modern ideas, first expressed by V. I. Vernadsky and now included in textbooks, our modern topoatmosphere (without which no animal life is possible that needs free oxygen) is biogenic. Without plants, animals would not only suffocate, but they would have nothing to eat, because only plants have the ability to convert inorganic forms of matter into organic ones.

There are no reliable organic remains in the deposits of the Archean era (see the Geochronological table on p. 36). The oldest known undoubtedly plant remains have been found in the Precambrian limestones of Montana; bacteria and various algae have been found and well studied in the Proterozoic deposits; in the Precambrian deposits of the Czech Republic - wood described under the name Archaexylan, with signs of the structure of gymnosperms (that is, conifers); in the Precambrian of the Urals, indefinable remains of terrestrial plants and spores of higher plants were found; from the deposits of the Cambrian of the Baltic, spores of higher terrestrial plants - bryophytes and ferns are described; from the Upper Silurian of the Australian province of Victoria - the flora of primitive, now extinct psilophyte plants. In the Devonian, the known terrestrial flora is already characterized by a great variety of species and groups.

Geological table

Vegetable world

Thus, based on modern scientific ideas and data, it is necessary, in full accordance with the Bible, to consider that plants were the first organized forms of organic life on Earth, and the plant world already in ancient times reached a significant variety of forms.

The above verses tell of the creation of the sun, moon and stars. We have already talked a lot about cosmogony in the previous essay, so now we will formulate only brief conclusions from two scientific hypotheses of the origin of stars: 1) both hypotheses suggest the presence of prestellar matter in the Universe. This matter forms stars only under certain conditions; 2) when implementing the mechanism of the second concept (assuming the presence of a special superdense state of matter), the existence of invisible stars is fundamentally possible, which can flare up in subsequent times. Further, the formation of clumps of matter in such limited areas is possible, beyond which no radiation can penetrate. Such formation of matter can be characterized in figurative biblical language as God separated the light from the darkness.

Age of the Universe

Let us consider the problem of the age of the Earth and the bodies of the Universe, as it appears to theology and modern natural-science consciousness.

For theology, the only criterion for the age of the world is the biblical texts. In the above texts of the book of Genesis, the creation of the world is described in certain stages, called “days”. It is impossible to understand by them our usual astronomical days associated with the rotation of the Earth around its axis, since the Sun did not exist until the fourth “day” and, therefore, there was no change of day and night. Since the six days of the Bible - the conditional division of time - has nothing to do with astronomical days, with their day and night, therefore the night is not mentioned in the book of Genesis in connection with the day of creation: “and there was evening, and there was morning” - for every hour has its own work, and it was not interrupted at night. This is emphasized by the order of the words “there was evening and there was morning” instead of the seemingly natural one: “there was morning and there was evening - the fourth day”.

It is necessary to dwell on the chronology from the creation of the world, which was previously accepted by the entire Christian world and covers about 7000 years.

There is no data in the biblical texts to determine the age of the world. Consequently, the question of calculating the age of the world is not within the competence of theology. Some interpreters of the Bible tried to approach the chronology indirectly, using the information available in the Bible about individual genera and generations and the history of the Jewish people, and received completely different numbers. The method used by them, by its very nature, could not be included in the task of determining the age of the world from the first day of creation. Science, on the other hand, has long been trying to estimate the age of various parts of the world from their very formation in various ways and methods. First of all, let us dwell on determining the age of the Earth.

Rough, simplified calculations represent the first infantile attempts of science to determine the age of the Earth. Only the discovery of radioactive decay by Becquerel and the Curies allowed geology to obtain a “standard of time”, independent of any geological processes. At any temperature, at any pressure, radioactive elements pass at the same rate into non-radioactive lead and helium. The ratio between radioactive elements, in particular uranium, and the lead or helium formed from it, adjusted for the decay rate, is a measure of time. The same measure of time can be the ratio between radiogenic and non-radiogenic isotopes of the same element. Not being able to delve into the details of the method for determining the time, we will report only the final results of the work done by a number of researchers.

1) The oldest minerals found on earth are 2.0–2.5 billion years old. The most ancient rocks on the earth's surface were found in Antarctica and have an age of 3.9–4.0 billion years.

2) The age of meteorites reaches 4.0–4.5 billion years.

3) Based on the study of solar radiation, V. G. Fesenkov believes that the age of the Sun should closely correspond to the age of the Earth and, probably, other planets, and suggests that the planets, in particular the Earth, could exist even in the absence of a fully formed Sun.

4) The theory of the expanding Universe predicts its age at 15–20 billion years.

Thus, in all the above cases, the determination of the age of objects (the expanding metagalaxy, the earth's crust, the Sun), made by different researchers, by different methods and methods, gave figures of the same order. It is impossible to talk about more, based on the requirements of scientific caution. Are these coincidences coincidental? It is difficult for us, brought up on the scientific thinking of the 20th century, to imagine that the entire majestic Universe with its billions of stars would have an age close to the age of the oldest rocks on the surface of our planet and the first birth of life on it.

Of course, one can doubt that the “redshift” indicates the scattering of galaxies, one can doubt Einstein’s theory, from which, regardless of the “redshift”, the expansion of the Universe theoretically follows, one can doubt the principles of determining the age of minerals and meteorites by radiological method and any other, one can doubt the reliability of astrophysical data, but then one has to generally deny the suitability of our observations for the interpretation of the Universe. Atheists are on this path. They say that it is impossible to transfer the laws of motion of a finite, limited region of the Universe to the entire infinite Universe. In other words, they recognize two worlds: one world, where laws are in force that lead to "priestry", where, unfortunately, they have to live, and another world, a world not yet discovered and unknown to us, a world "other world" (!), where there are no laws leading to "priestry". The best thing that atheists should do, in order not to fall into a trap themselves, is to admit that science, due to its limitations in each specific period of time, cannot give a complete picture of the Universe that accurately reflects it, and, therefore, is unsuitable as a method of anti-religious propaganda.

Wanting to understand the meaning of the biblical description of the fifth day of creation, we must remember that the classification of the ancient peoples, as well as the modern peoples of archaic culture, has an externally morphological ecological character, and not a comparative anatomical one, like modern natural science systematics. For the ancients, the lizard seemed more related to some centipede, and not to a frog, a sparrow - to a bee, and not to a mole, a bat - to a swallow, and not to an elephant; Will not, finally, our poorly educated contemporary also compare the dolphin with a fish rather than with a cow? From a scientific biological point of view, the kinship relations of animals in the examples given are just the opposite.

Reptiles and birds

So, what is the meaning of the ancients put in the concept of "reptiles and birds"? Reptiles (20th c., in Hebrew sheres) means the worms of water and animals proper, in some cases multiparous, which is emphasized in this text by the word yish e r e su 'let it bring forth', derived from sharas, which means 'swarm, give birth' or 'beget in abundance'. Luther translated verse 20 more successfully than the Russian translation: Und Gott sprach: Es errege sich das Wasser mit webenden und lebendigen Tieren, lit. ‘God said: Let the water be stirred by swarming and living animals.

Such an expanded understanding of the word sheres is also given by St. Basil the Great in his “Shestodnev”. In his commentary on verse 20, he writes: “A command went out, and the rivers produce, and the lakes bring forth their proper and natural rocks; and the sea is morbid with all kinds of swimming animals”, and below in connection with this lists not only fish, but also slugs and polyps, cuttlefish, scallops, crabs, crayfish and “thousands of various oysters”.

Under the birds in antiquity, as the same Basil the Great testifies, all animals flying above the earth were understood, both the birds themselves and insects.

In verse 21, the word tanninim is used, denoting a large sea animal proper, translated in Russian as 'fish', and as reptiles, not the word sheres is used, as in verse 20, but romeset, denoting crawling, reptile animals, so that in this case, the Russian translation is quite accurate.

So, in verses 20-23 now being analyzed, it is told about the appearance on Earth of various animals, the ancestral home of which, according to the Bible, is water; it is said that the sea was inhabited by a wide variety of creatures - small and large, and that terrestrial reptiles occurred after water ones and their ancestral home was also water.

Without dwelling on the relationship of individual types of the animal world and the genetic transition from one type to another, about which there are a large number of often mutually exclusive hypotheses, let us consider the factual material that geology and paleontology currently provide.

The earliest stages in the development of the animal world are hidden from us; the first animal remains belong to the Upper Precambrian, these are the nuclei and imprints of protozoa, the remains of the skeleton of sponges, the tubes of the passage of worms, the horn shells of brachipods, molluscs and the tubes of pteropods (crustaceans).

In the Cambrian, judging by the available remains, the animal world already reaches a huge variety of forms. There are representatives of almost all living types. In the deposits of the Cambrian, not only the remains of hard skeletons, usually only preserved in a fossil state, were found, but also (in North America) excellently preserved imprints of organisms that have only a soft body: jellyfish, holothurians, various worm-like and arthropods. The words of St. Basil the Great are applicable to the Cambrian Sea that "the sea was morbid with all kinds of floating animals."

With even greater reason, these words can be attributed to the Silurian period: up to 15,000 species of Silurian marine organisms are known. Apparently, the attempt of animals to get out of the water is connected with the Silurian, since in the sediments of this age, however, extremely rarely, there are remains of land arthropod centipedes and scorpions, that is, in biblical terminology, reptiles. How this transition was carried out in general, what were its stages - we do not know; it is known that by the end of the Devonian it had already ended, because from the Devonian of North America (Pennsylvania) the imprint of the four-toed foot of a terrestrial vertebrate (Thinopus) has long been known, and from the Upper Devonian of Greenland - the first reliable bone remains of an amphibian skull.

In the Carboniferous period following the Devonian, triton-like amphibians were widespread - they were animals that reptiles on the earth in the full sense. At the same time, insects from the Orthoptera group appear and reach their greatest development. The number of their known species - with the incompleteness of the geological record - reaches 1000. About this period, we can say that "birds flew across the firmament of heaven."

In the Permian period, along with amphibians, reptiles (reptiles in the modern sense of the word) were also widespread. The Mesozoic era is the true realm of reptiles, which not only gave rise to gigantic forms such as the 28-meter-high Brachiosaurus, but also filled the "waters of the seas", along with a variety of fish, amphibians and a rich world of invertebrates.

In the Jurassic, flying reptiles have been identified whose wing structure in general terms resembled that of bats, and two finds of real, although very primitive birds from the lithographic schists of Bavaria, are known from Jurassic deposits. In the Cretaceous the birds become quite numerous.

Thus, according to biblical terminology, the Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian period and a significant part of the Mesozoic era can be called the day of reptiles and birds.

This is what the Bible tells about the first stage of the creations of the sixth day. Undoubtedly, by animals and cattle, land mammals should be understood, and that their homeland is the mainland, but it is not clear what is meant by reptiles, since reptiles have already been mentioned in the description of the fifth day. Perhaps the natural scientific data themselves will help us to understand the meaning of this term in the Bible.

At present, the appearance of mammals is associated with the finds of extremely scarce remains in the sediments of the Middle and Upper Jurassic. Rare remains of marsupial and placental mammals are known from the Upper Cretaceous, and the Tertiary period following it can be named together with the modern Quaternary era of mammals; they not only dominate the land (animals and cattle), but rose into the air (bats, etc.) and took possession of the seas (whales, dolphins, seals, walruses, etc.). The shape, richness of colors and size variations of mammals are striking - from tiny voles to giant elephants and whales. They have mastered all the forests and steppes of the globe, they are not afraid of either the heat of the deserts or the cold of the polar countries - everywhere they are the most mobile, the most active, the most intelligent animals. Man himself belongs to them.

In all likelihood, the reptiles in the book of Genesis mean frogs, toads (that is, tailless amphibians) and snakes. Paleontological data also incline us to this understanding of this word, since the appearance of amphibians and snakes coincides with the time of the appearance of mammals.

Is the world static?

We have seen on previous pages that, according to biblical and scientific data, the face of the earth and the cosmos as a whole has changed. Thinking about the meaning of the biblical text, theology puts forward a problem of great natural scientific importance: did God create the world immutable and static, or can the world of God change and develop? Is it possible to improve in this world and grow from the lowest to the highest in the field of spiritual and material, especially biological development, or is everything that exists subject to monotonous, eternally repeating closed cycles, like the movement of machine pistons? To the question: The Creator of which world should have greater wisdom and greater power? - only one answer is possible: of course, the world is moving and developing. Thus, from a Christian theological point of view, recognizing God as Almighty, it is easier to accept the natural scientific theories of an evolving universe than a static one. The great principle of universal development, penetrating to one degree or another all of God's creation, is concentrated with special force in the inner, spiritual world of man - the crown of Divine creativity. Consequently, if a person is a creature with will and mind, does not work on his spiritual development, does not strive for it, then he consciously or unconsciously is an opponent of the great creative idea of ​​the Divine, that is, a conscious or unconscious God-fighter, and therefore spirituality begins in him. desolation, regression.

The possibility of the mental and spiritual development of man has been undeniably proven by all human history, and especially by the countless host of Christian ascetics, canonized and non-canonized saints.

It seemed that theology was supposed to anticipate the ideas of the natural evolution of the world. They are indeed present in the bud in some Church Fathers, although they start from other starting positions. So, for example, the Monk John of Damascus wrote: “what began with a change must change.” But why, then, did the Inquisition and the Jesuits fight against scientific discoveries, why did some of the churchmen meet with hostility to the theory of evolution of animals and plants? Why in the 19th century did they stubbornly defend the idea of ​​the immutability of species, although such an assumption has no basis either in Tradition or Revelation and is contrary to all analogies in nature? Based on the limited scientific data of the ancient world and the Middle Ages, theologians created a speculative scheme of the universe, which, in their view, exhausted the power of God. And so, when the empirical study of nature, the creation of God, expanded the limits of His power and wisdom known to people beyond the boundaries of their old ideas, these theologians forgot that the power of the Creator extends beyond the limits of human understanding, raised a fuss about the imaginary atheism of scientific theories, “for His immeasurable creative power and wisdom” (Lomonosov’s words) were measured by their limited knowledge. However, not all clergy are guilty of this. Some of them were even the founders of evolutionary theories in biology. So, for example, the English priest W. Herbert (1837) believed that “species were created in a highly plastic state, and that through crossings and deviations they produced all currently existing species.”

At present, biological evolution can be considered a scientifically established pattern. However, contrary to popular belief, neither zoology nor botany as a science of modern life forms (neobiology) can prove it. They can only prove the plasticity of the organism or its stability, or the nature of the relationship between these two polar properties of the organism. In short, neobiology deals with factors that can be considered factors in evolution, but not with evolution itself.

Only paleontology, together with geology, has actual documents of past epochs of life. Consequently, only it can provide a factual basis for the history of the organic world, that is, a framework within which questions of the development of life can and must be worked out - that empirical basis outside of which the realm of fantasy begins.

Paleontology and evolution

However, paleontology did not immediately start talking about evolution. The famous Belgian paleontologist Louis Dollo divides the history of paleontology into three periods: the first is the period of the creation of fables, when instead of studying, they preferred to reason, and large extinct animals were mistaken for the skeletons of giants or mythological creatures; the second is the morphological period; it essentially begins paleontology as a science of fossils, created by Cuvier in the same way as comparative anatomy; and the third period - the period of evolutionary paleontology, created by the works of V. O. Kovalevsky. “The work of Kovalevsky,” wrote Dollo, “is a true treatise on method in paleontology.”

What geological and paleontological evidence can be given in favor of the evolution of the organic world?

1) It has been empirically established that in ancient deposits there are no modern forms and there are remains of now extinct animals, and different deposits differ from each other in different fauna, and in the transition to younger deposits we meet more and more highly organized forms. This can be explained either by Cuvier's theory of catastrophes (which assumes an infinite number of repeated creations and destructions of everything previously created, and each time more highly organized organisms appear than in previous acts of creation), or the result of evolution.

From a theological point of view, the theory of catastrophes is nonsense and has no basis in Revelation. It does not reflect Christian theological views, as they are now trying to portray, but the state of the factual material in the era of Cuvier, when, with a comparatively small number of paleontological finds, intermediate forms between known species and genera were not found. This circumstance, by the way, forced Darwin to devote a large section in his Origin of Species to the incompleteness of the geological record in order to save his theory from the blows of paleontologists.

2) In the fossil state, before the appearance of the remains of new classes and other classification groups, there are remains of organisms that occupy an intermediate position between the new “future” class and the previously existing one, and it is very difficult to assign them to one class or another. In this case, it is impossible to restore all the stages due to the incompleteness of the geological record, since we do not know whether we are really dealing with transitional phenomena or with traces of the presence of certain classes unknown to us. This leaves a loophole for skeptics.

3) But there are genera in which it is possible to trace all the gradual transitions from one form to another from successive horizons. Moreover, the extreme forms are so different from each other that they, of course, should be attributed to different types; it is impossible to draw a boundary between these species in the section, since the intermediate forms give very gradual transitions. We are confronted, as it were, with the situation that it is necessary somewhere conditionally to attribute the mother to one species, and the daughter born by her to another - new, and to attribute two half-brothers, born simultaneously, to different systematic units, so that somehow, at least conditionally to draw a line between species. A fact that is impossible in neobiology, but often happens in paleontology.

In this work, we do not dwell on the currently established laws of evolution (adaptive radiation, acceleration of the development of tachygenesis, irreversibility of evolution, non-specialization, etc.), since this is not directly related to our topic. We only note that between Darwinism and evolutionary views one should not put an equal sign, they are not identical, as our high school students think.

Creation of the world and the origin of man

The problem of the origin of man is one of the most exciting in biology and anthropology. For several centuries, it has been a battlefield between people holding different philosophical, scientific, religious and even political views.

Beginning with Giordano Bruno, who in his work "The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast" (1584) spoke in favor of the independent origin of man in different parts of the globe, the ideas of polyphilia were used in the fight against the Christian religion. Similar goals were pursued by the development of the hypothesis of the polygenesis of human races, which contained the assertion that different races are either different species of the same genus, or even different genera. The works of monophilist scientists, in particular in modern times (analysis of anatomical features that do not have adaptive significance - Henri Balois), proved that the only possible concept regarding the human race is monophyly.

If the question of the unity (monophily) of the human race can now be considered scientifically more or less resolved, then questions about the specific ways of the formation of the species Homo sapiens and the antiquity of modern man are the subject of fierce discussions.

Between the previous stage and the Neanderthals and modern humans, whose oldest race is known as the Cro-Magnons, there is a certain break in the gradualness, which is recognized by all scientists.

Archaeological finds show the impossibility of palaeontologically protecting the antiquity of Homo sapiens.

The question arises, why are they so stubbornly striving to prove the great antiquity of modern man, to prove his antiquity even at the cost of unconsciously or consciously distorting scientific facts?

The fact is that orthodox Darwinism explains the formation of man with his amazing mental abilities, which sharply distinguish Homo sapiens from the entire animal world, by the action of natural selection, which determines the entire diversity of animals and plants. According to Darwin's theory in its orthodox form, any species can evolve as a result of the fact that its individual representatives receive a slight superiority over their relatives, and only these more perfect representatives always survive in the struggle for existence and only they pass on their progressive signs to their descendants. In order to explain the origin of man as the result of this extremely slow-acting mechanism of evolution, one must admit the enormous duration of his existence. The human brain clearly exceeds the human need to survive in its struggle for existence with other animals. Therefore, Darwin was forced to attribute his improvement to the long and most severe struggle of man with man and one human tribe with another. He also had to resort to the factor of sexual selection. In other words, according to Darwin, the mental abilities of a person satisfied his needs to survive in the fight against his own kind. Consequently, they must be immeasurably lower for peoples standing at lower levels of historical development than for peoples who have moved forward in their historical development. However, modern research has discarded the idea of ​​mental retardation of the so-called savages.

In the cited biblical verses, first of all, attention is drawn to the grammatical agreement of the singular and plural. In verse 26, "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." In this there is a hint of the mystery of the Holy Trinity, Which in Three Persons is the One Indivisible Deity. God is One, but Three Persons of the Divine Essence. The dogma of the Trinity of the Godhead is completely unknown to the ancient Jews, but is entirely connected with Christianity, so for an atheist this discrepancy turns into a simple typo of the compiler or copyist. For a Christian, it is a pre-revelation of what later became a revelation.

So, man was conceived by the special will of the Deity as the lord of the earth and everything that is on it. “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul,” the second chapter of the book of Genesis complements the narrative of the first chapter (Genesis 2:7).

In the Bible, we do not find a story about how, by what means man was made from the dust of the earth. It only indicates, as St. Gregory the Theologian notes, that man was created from the already existing “material”. Both our soul and our body, as the great Christian ascetic St. Seraphim of Sarov taught, are created from “the dust of the earth.” Man, created from the dust of the earth, was "an active animal being, like other living beings on the earth<…>though he excelled over all beasts, cattle, and birds.” They, as part of the earth, that is, as originating from the earth, could even serve as material for its creation. Therefore, there is nothing anti-Christian in including man in one systematic row with other animals, as Linnaeus did and as is customary now in biology - this is a statement of one of the sides of human nature. There is nothing anti-religious in the hypotheses of the origin of man from an ape-like creature; for a Christian, the confirmation of these hypotheses only reveals how man was created in the biological process of his formation. The main thing for the Bible is not this, but that God “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul,” that is, a man who had previously been “the dust of the earth”, an animal, although the most perfect and most intelligent of all animals , acquired the Holy Spirit and through this - the ability of real communication with the Divine and the possibility of immortality. Contacting the earthly world with his material nature, man became the king of this world and the vicar of God on earth. And as the vicar of God on earth, he must continue the work begun by God - the decoration and cultivation of the earth to the glory of God.

In creativity, in whatever way it manifests itself, whether in art, in the creation of new breeds of animals and plants, or in the creation of new celestial bodies, one of the sides of our likeness to God lies. “You are gods,” the Lord said (John 10:34). Creativity must be approached with prayer, with sacred mystical awe, with deep gratitude to God for the joy of our likeness to Him, with fear of what we will use this likeness bestowed upon us. Human creativity has two sides: the outer one, which has just been discussed, and the inner one, which many people have forgotten about at the present time. Carried away by their external creativity, directed not to the glory of God, but to the glory of man, people forgot about the inner creativity and, amusing themselves with their discoveries, inventions and the so-called “miracles” of technology, they lose the Kingdom of God and their immortality in a game of chance.

God offered life and death to man, good and evil (see Deuteronomy 30:15), so that man himself could choose and make himself this or that.

Man can descend to an animal state and rise with the help of God to an angelic state, for in him are laid the seeds of a manifold life; constantly, regularly changing world gives a person the opportunity to develop and grow according to his will.

The world could not be built according to Beautiful Arbitrariness and not have laws, if only because a person could cognize only a world in which laws exist; only in a world that developed according to laws could a person possess, only in it could a person manifest his creative abilities.

Having considered the biblical story about the creation of the world in the light of modern ideas, we did not see anything in it that contradicted science. It can be stated quite definitely that science in its development is more and more consistent with the story of Moses. His story in many details becomes clear only now: the beginning of the world, light before the Sun and stars, emphasizing the anthropological factor in the development of nature, and much more. A comparison of the latest discoveries of science with the Bible clearly shows how much the providence of the Jewish prophet rose above not only the limited ideas of the ancient peoples, but also above the views of the naturalists of modern times. For an atheist, this is an inexplicable miracle, for an anti-religious person, a fact that must be kept silent; for a Christian and a Jew this is not surprising, for for them the Bible and Nature are two books written by God, and therefore they cannot contradict one another. The imaginary contradictions between them are explained by the fact that a person incorrectly reads one of these books or both together.

Looking back at the path of knowledge of the Great Book of Nature passed by science for many centuries, we can say in the words of Einstein: “The more we read, the more fully and highly we appreciate the perfect construction of the book, although its complete solution seems to be moving away as we moving forward.”

At the very beginning of the essays, it was said that Christianity considers God the Creator to be the beginning of everything. In presenting the history of creation, we consciously tried to remain on the basis of well-established facts and generally accepted opinions in our atheistic age, contrasting them with the biblical story and not rising to theological contemplation and thought. Now, finishing this essay, it is worth, perhaps, touching them a little, at least with hints.

From the biblical story about the creation of the world, it can be seen that in the creation of the world after its creation, natural forces and natural processes acted and developed: “and the earth brought forth greenery”, “let the water bring forth reptiles”, etc. But these elements did not act arbitrarily, but upon receiving the special abilities granted to them by God: “And God said: let the earth bring forth greenery,” and she produced, “let the water bring forth reptiles,” and she produced, that is, matter did not simply develop as a result of its inherent properties , and the will of the Divine, passing from one stage to another, granted new abilities to the elements, expressing Itself in the form of natural laws, that is, laws that have retained their significance to this day. In other words, God, having created matter, did not leave it to remain in chaos, but as a wise Ruler directed the development of the Universe isolated from Him, being in this sense the Creator of everything visible and invisible.

The manifestation of the will of God is visible throughout the history of mankind, but in most cases it is expressed in the form of natural laws - imperceptible to the outside world, which does not even heed miracles, but significant for a Christian. A Christian scientist must be able to see with his mind and feel with his heart the manifestation of the Divine Will in Nature and in human history and tell about It.

“It is fitting to keep the sovereign’s secret, but it is commendable to announce the deeds of God” (Tov 12:11).

Cm. Archpriest Gleb Kaleda. The Bible and the science of the creation of the world // Alpha and Omega. 1996. No. 2/3 (9/10). - Ss. 26–27. - Red.

In the sacred books, the word "day" is used quite often without connection with astronomical days. Jesus Christ calls the entire time of His ministry a “day.” “Abraham your father,” He says to the Jews, “was glad to see My day” (John 8:56). The Apostle Paul says: “The night has passed, and the day has drawn near; therefore let us cast off the works of darkness” (Rom. 13:12); “Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2). In the latter case, the day is the time after the birth of Christ. “Before your eyes,” David figuratively exclaimed in the psalm, “a thousand years are like yesterday” (Ps 89:5), and the apostle Peter wrote: “With the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Pet 3:8).

We find the same understanding of the biblical day in St. Basil the Great. In the second discourse on the Six Days, this “universal teacher,” as the Church calls him, says: “Whether you call it a day or an age, you express the same concept; whether you say that this is a day, or that this is a state, it is always one, and not many; If you call it a century, it will be unique, not multiple.”

A critical analysis of this chronology was given in 1757–1759. the founder of the Russian natural-scientific apologetics of Christianity, M. V. Lomonosov, who in his work “On the Layers of the Earth” wrote about the presence of “…implicit and doubtful numbers in the Jewish Old Testament, which, like many other places in it, could not quite make out to this day the most skilful teachers of this language; and this is not the last reason that all Christian nations begin the calculation of years from the birth of Christ, leaving the ancient, as not quite definite and doubtful; moreover, there is no agreement between our Christian chronologists on this; for example, Theophilus Bishop of Antioch believes from Adam to Christ 5515 years, Augustine, 5351, Jerome 3941”.

Polyphilia- a theory according to which life (or its individual forms) could independently originate in different places. Monophyly- the theory of a single origin of life. Accordingly, the terms polygenesis And monogenesis(as well as monophyly) reflect views on the origin of mankind. - Ed.

The so-called theory of primitive (prelogical) thinking, put forward in the last century by L. Levy-Bruhl and supported by a number of ethnographers and psychologists, is based, firstly, on bias and, secondly, on insufficient knowledge of the material. The same can be said about the absolutely untenable statement according to which the languages ​​of the peoples of archaic culture lack words of abstract meaning. - Red.

The earth was formless and empty, and darkness was over the deep, and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters.

And God said: let there be light. And there was light.

And God saw the light that it was good, and God separated the light from the darkness.

And God called the light day, and the darkness night. And there was evening and there was morning: one day.

And God said: Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate water from water. And it became so.

And God created the firmament. And God called the firmament sky. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning: the second day.

And God said, Let the waters that are under the sky be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear. And it became so. And God called the dry land earth, and the gathering of waters he called the seas. And God saw that it was good. And God said, Let the earth bring forth vegetation, grass yielding seed (after its kind and likeness), and a fruitful tree yielding fruit after its kind, in which is its seed, on the earth. And it became so. And the earth brought forth grass, herb yielding seed after its kind, and tree bearing fruit, in which is its seed after its kind, upon the earth. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning: the third day.

And God said: Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven to illuminate the earth, and to separate the day from the night, and for signs, and times, and days, and years; and let them be lamps in the firmament of heaven to give light to the earth. And it became so. And God created two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the smaller light to rule the night, and the stars; and God placed them in the firmament of heaven to give light to the earth, and rule over the day and night, and separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning: the fourth day.

And God said, Let the water bring forth reptiles, living creatures; and let the birds fly over the earth, in the firmament of heaven. And it became so. And God created great fish, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth, after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying: Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.

And there was evening and there was morning: the fifth day.

And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after its kind, cattle, and creeping things, and beasts of the earth after their kind. And it became so. And God created the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing on the earth after its kind. And God saw that it was good.

And God said, Let us make man in our image and after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air (and over the beasts), and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

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

And God blessed them, and God said to them: Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea (and over the beasts), and over the birds of the air (and over every livestock, and over all the earth), and over every living thing that creeps on the earth.

And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed, which is in all the earth... and every tree bearing fruit of a tree yielding seed; - this will be food for you; but to all the beasts of the earth, and to all the birds of the air, and to every creeping thing on the earth, in which there is a living soul, I have given all green herbs for food. And it became so.

And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning: the sixth day.

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

And on the seventh day God finished His works which He did, and rested on the seventh day from all His works which He did.

And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it...

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.

And the Lord God planted a paradise in Eden in the east, and placed there the man whom he had created. And out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, and the tree of life in the midst of paradise, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” (Gen. 1, 1-31; 2, 1-3, 7-9)

So, magnificent was God's peace given to man as a habitation. Luxurious was the nature that surrounded him; she generously scattered her gifts before him. To live and be blessed - that's what it was appointment man: for this, he was called from non-existence by the Almighty, All-Good, All-Righteous, and therefore the All-Blessed God, who wanted to share His bliss with His beloved creation - man.

That's cause its creation, and at the same time Start his relationship with his Creator. These relations, having received the beginning from the Beginningless and Infinite God Himself, will never have their end.

But the whole point is that, having given life to man, God gave him at the same time free the soul, although created in the image and likeness of God, is free to direct its relations with God both in a good and in a bad direction of its own free will.

How did people make use of this freedom, which was given to them indefinitely and elevates them? In what relationship to God have they placed themselves and are they?

You can trace the history of the relationship between the Creator and creation in the sacred books written by inspired people. The name of these books is Bible, or stories about the life of people from their creation to the incarnation of the Son of God on earth (Old Testament) and from the Nativity of the Savior of the world, Jesus Christ, to His death on the Cross for the sake of redemption for mankind who used its freedom for evil (New Testament, Gospel).

It is from this sacred source - Divine Revelation that the “Biblical stories” are offered, available for acquaintance with the history of the union or communication of God with people, which should constitute the initial and main science of man - in order to consciously study his falling away from God or disunity him with God and at the same time tirelessly attracting him to Himself by God, learn to direct yourself to return to the lost paradise - the eternal Kingdom of your Heavenly Father.

Question #2981-2

According to the Christian faith, God created the earth 7510 years ago, and the scientific world believes that the earth was formed about 4 billion years ago. Who to believe?

Nicholas , Nab.Chelny, Russia
02/10/2008

Dear Father Oleg!

I sincerely want to believe in God. It is easier and calmer and, probably, the threat of going to hell is less terrible, because there is still at least some hope for an easier fate, and if a person does not believe in an afterlife, then he already knows 100% that death is this is the end of everything for him. But believing blindly in God is also not an option. Ultimately, everyone needs the truth. Where is she? According to the Christian faith, God created the earth 7510 years ago, and the scientific world believes that the earth was formed about 4 billion years ago, the universe - 14 billion years.
Who to believe?

With respect, Nicholai.

Father Oleg Molenko's answer:

Nikolai, if you really sincerely want to believe in God, then you will certainly believe. But faith is not separated from life. Faith is not only the acceptance of a certain set of concepts, knowledge and revelations, but a life that is consistent with God's providence, will and institutions. Unfortunately, most people who have accepted faith in Christ accept it only as a theoretical worldview, and continue to live in a pagan way or even worse.

Faith in itself does not relieve the threat of going to hell, but it gives a person a real opportunity to change himself, reconcile with the Lord God, achieve salvation and move into the eternal abodes of the Kingdom of Heaven. The biological (physical) death of a person is not the end of everything, but only the end of earthly life, which is given to us by God for correction and testing.

With the end of earthly life comes a new eternal state of the soul of man (and after the general resurrection of the whole man). This position is either eternally blessed or eternally painful. The choice of one of these two positions each person makes for himself.

It is impossible to live without faith. If a person does not believe in God or God, then he thereby believes evil spirits and people who lie in their madness that there is no God at all or that He is not the same as He revealed it to us Himself.

Truth (with a capital letter) is the Son of God or the Word of God who came to our earthly world, who, being God, became a man, the Savior and Redeemer of all people. From this Truth come all other truths. So, only that which leads through Christ to God or to something divine is true. According to the Christian faith, consistent with the divine revelation recorded in the Holy Scriptures, God created the first man 7509 years ago (in relation to the current 2009 AD). This number of years is clearly drawn through the history of people from Adam to Christ, recorded in the Holy Scriptures. From Christ to the end of our days, the number of years is recorded in the prophetic books of Scripture. This is the immutable truth from God and our Creator.

The so-called "scientific world", which consists of a number of proud, pompous conceit and false knowledge of people, asserts a fabulous and nothing based chronology of billions of years. This is complete nonsense, causing only laughter and regret in a person faithful to God for such a great error. "Scholarly" men are mistaken in this matter, supplying their fictional (fantastic) reasoning and assumptions (hypotheses) for its resolution. They do not look from the beginning to the end (for they did not exist at all in the beginning), but from the end to the beginning. Having felt something at the end, they take these experiments to build an assumption about the number of years of existence of the earth and the universe on the basis of their own logical thinking and the erroneous application of today's experiment to the past. On the one hand, they erroneously assert that over the course of many, many, many years there have been dramatic changes in nature, the environment, etc. current observations and experiences. A simple thought about what really happened in the beginning cannot enter their heads. God knows this for sure and reveals it to His faithful, but they do not know this and are engaged in fictions. They cannot imagine that God immediately, with a wave, created the sky (firmament) and the earth. They cannot even think about the form and quality in which God created them. God created heaven and earth, but not from zero marks and parameters, but from some defined by Him. So the first man - Adam - God created an adult (at about the age of 30 years). A scientist would have looked at Adam and declared with all responsibility and scientific certainty that this man lived for 30 Earth years. Why? Because he has such an experience that tells him about these 30 years. But in fact, Adam did not live 30 years, but only looked 30 years old on his first day of being. In the same way, the earth was created by God immediately in adulthood, which scientists do not take into account. Experience dictates to them that the earth began from scratch. But it did not start from scratch, but appeared, according to the word of God, in finished form. The mechanism for calculating years is also not reliable. It is based on the experience of the decay of the carbon atom observed today. But who said that it was so in the beginning and always? This is nothing more than an erroneous assumption.

In order to be reliable and honest in the issue of chronology, the scientist had to be transported with all his equipment to the beginning and make all the measurements and calculations there. But this is unattainable for scientists. The term of their life is incomparable with the term of the existence of the earth and the universe. That is why there can be no question of any scientific certainty when referring to the past or the future.

So, does science have no place at all in our lives? This is not true. She has her place, and when she humbly takes it, then she is acceptable for this temporary life. Where is her place? Its place is today and only as an applied science. In other words, science can only be reliable in its current experience and experiment.

The more science goes beyond its limits, the more it errs, moving from concrete experience to hypotheses and assumptions, which are the fantasies of the mind of specific people. Every person (and this is what revelation says, and the same experience) is a lie, weakness, imperfection. A person in his current state - a state of fall or a great spiritual illness - is very limited in his abilities and very prone to error and error. In addition, the existing spirits of evil act on him invisibly, but tangibly, before which science with its experiments is powerless. Demons can "breed" scientists, inspire them with all sorts of nonsense, such as the theory of the origin and distribution of species (known as Darwin), the theory of many billions of years of the existence of the earth, or the theory of the first explosion and expansion of the universe. Demons can easily manipulate scientists and their minds if they do not believe in God, God and His revelation, as well as in the existence of demons themselves. A scientist cannot experimentally capture demons or establish any patterns in relation to them. Moreover, he cannot do this in relation to the Lord God and His invisible world. A person who believes in God is incomparably more correct and accurate, and much more than scientists, knows about the world around him. He knows this from divine revelation, from his own experience and, last but not least, from the experience of the applied sciences. An unbelieving or falsely believing scientist has only his own stupidity and unreliable scientific experience, but he does not have the main thing - divine revelation, which, without any experiment, tells us what was-is-will be in reality!

Therefore, Nicholas, I advise you to believe only in God and live by His revelation. It is true, reliable, undoubtedly useful, interesting, informative and blissful!