Origins Template Cwv 101 - the First 3 Days According to Genesis

Origins Template

1. Name title ect.
2. The first 3 days according to Genesis

• Day 1: The Heavens and the Earth

• God created the heavens and the earth, the heavens discuss everything outside of the earth, including outer space. At this point the earth would not be formed into the earth we see today. On this day he also separated the light from the dark and created our days and nights. (Genesis 1: 1-5 New king James Version)

• Day 2: The sky

• God created the sky which is the barrier between the water’s surface and outer space. This would have also created the atmosphere which keeps the earth in orbit around its self and keeps us from getting sucked into space (aka Gravity). (Genesis 1: 6-8 New king James Version)

• Day 3: Separating land and sea

• God created our dry land, making the continents and islands above the large bodies of water. God then declares that all this is good. At this time he also creates all plant life both large and small. He created this life to be self-sustaining with the ability to reproduce (Photosynthesis and Seeds/pollen). (Genesis 1: 9-13 New king James Version)

• The earth up to this point is very basic, with a current self-sustaining, life forms. However, these creations were part of huge scientific discoveries, including the orbit of the earth, gravity, photosynthesis and our atmosphere. All of which are extremely important to our life here on earth.

1. The last 3 days according to Genesis

• Day 4: The stars and the “Heavenly Bodies”

• God is at this point is preparing to give man life, he began to create the things that keep our precious earth in balance, the sun and the moon, and all the stars in our sky, these gave man the ability to tell time, and the earth the ability to keep everything the right temperature, and also helps us as humans to differentiate day from night, the sun being the day time and the moon being the night. The moon has a gravitational pull on the earth, which also helps to keep it in just the right place, this also determines the high and low tides of the seas. (Genesis 1:14-19 New king James Version)

• Day 5: Creation of animals

• God created all of the life that lives in the water, and all the birds that fly in the air. All these creatures are also given the abilities to reproduce, however many do in different ways, including, live birth and eggs. However this day specifically stays towards the importance of creating all the creatures in the sky and in the water, it’s apparent that these creatures took a great deal of time to create, making many different species of sea life and making different varieties of birds. (Genesis 1: 20-23 New king James Version)

• Day 6: Man and land creatures.

• God created all of the creatures that live on land with man, these creatures range in many varieties and sizes. He then moved on to tackle the task that was man, ‘God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”’ (Genesis 1:26) This gives us insights as to how we were created, allowing us to understand where the views on our bodies come from and what were created after. According to Genesis we are tasked with the role to care for all of Gods creations. While this task took one day to complete, the wording and the amount of space that our creation takes up in Genesis shows us how important we really were to the creation, what do they say, “The best is saved for last” or in this case, almost last. (Genesis 1:24-31 New king James Version)

1. Emphasis on Family, Humanity, and Sundays according to Genesis

• Family

• In Genesis 2 we begin to discuss the family that God designed for us beginning in the Garden of Eden, God had created man, Adam, to oversee and care for the garden and its inhabitants. God then decided that man was to not be alone, he was to have a partner and God created woman from the rib of man.(Genesis 2:18) He blessed them and then told them to “Be fruitful, multiply and replenish the earth.”(Genesis 1:28) Even after the fall God continued to tell his plan to multiple people throughout the bible including Noah and his sons, and the miraculous blessing of Abrahams son during his old age.

• Humanity

• Humanities existence is very largely highlighted in the first 5 chapters of Genesis. From our strong creation of both men and women, to us being told to replenish the earth with a family. We are to continue to follow in his light, and to stay strong against the temptations of the devil. He told Adam another part of our lives we are to take care of our earth, knowing this we as humans we should know that caring for our planet is highly important and we should take these needed precautions to care for our world. (Genesis 1-5 New king James Version)

• Sundays

• Our Sundays need to be remembered as one of the most important days of the week. We often forget about this day as we go throughout our we forget to take our rest day to reflect on Gods blessings in our life and to also just see how far we’ve come that week. God sanctified the 7th day of the week during his creation to rest from his work and to make time to reflect. While this world we currently life in is always going every day of the week, we can’t always stop to just take every Sunday off, so whether we take the time of the day to go to church or we have to work, It’s important to especially remember to stop and reflect. (Genesis 2:3 New king James Version)

1. My belief on the origin of the world according to the Bible

• What I believe.

• I believe that the world possibly could have been created according to the way it is laid out in Genesis, I really think that God created our current bodies according to his, this makes our bodies the most important temples in all of Gods creations. Nothing more important than that could have been created in his image, we are a splitting image of him. I also believe that the Garden of Eden was our humble beginning, where the first man and woman lived, it was like Gods test run to see how man and woman would act. After casting them out due to the fall, we were given the earth to grow and live our lives in the best way we can. I also believe that God did design the way the world would be and how the universe was made, from the placements of the sun, moon and stars, to the positions of the continents of the earth.

1. My belief on the origin of the world according to science

• Big Bang Theory

• While I believe that the earth was created to Gods design I believe more that the creation of the universe did happen according to the big bang, which is the combination of matter that results into a huge collision of smaller pieces of matter to create multiple parts of the universe as we know it. I know it can sound crazy to many Christians but I believe that this was what happened but that it was a God guided process. How else do we explain multiple craters in our earth’s surface, and the fact that we also have huge mountains that reach high steeps into the sky. We also have Volcanoes that are still creating multiple islands in the ocean, including the new smallest Hawaiian island. (Lane, 2013)

• Evolution

• To me Evolution is the only theory that explains the fact that we are finding new species of animals every day. I also think that we did evolve from monkeys, I know it sounds crazy, but I believe that it was a God guided process as well. God knew where we needed to be but he had to work backwards for ways for us to get there. I don’t think that Adam and eve were just thrown out of the Garden and we were just created through reproduction. We had the fall and I believe that we had to build ourselves back up through Evolution to be who we are. Because daily we have things that happen that we must adapt to. While I don’t believe that our bodies are going to change much more than they are already because we have a highly active brain that is always working to solve problems and take care of us. We can see multiple examples of evolution, including one of the most well-known which is Darwin’s finches. These finches lived on different islands and all had different problems, they began to evolve little by little and are continuing to evolve to solve these issues. They’re beaks would change little by little with every different age of birds. (Milone, 2008)

1. My belief on the age of the earth.

• 4.5 billion years’ old

• I believe what most scientists say about the age of the earth. I believe that we evolved from a long state in the world growing little by little over the years to become who we are, and the earth has had to evolve to deal with the environmental issues that each generation of life would create. We can see this because of the situations that happened with the dinosaurs, the earth had evolved to help plants produce more oxygen to help feed the herbivorous dinosaurs and when the age of carnivorous dinosaurs came in the earth was learning how to decompose the deceased dinosaurs. The earth is still evolving along with us, because of the age of time we are living in we produce more greenhouse gases than any other generation, which has an effect on our many ecosystems and our earth’s atmosphere. These changes we have seen every day, from rising and lowering the sea levels, to large unexpected storms, earthquakes, volcanoes, and so forth. But these types of changes take time making the earth older. (Milone, 2008)

1. Discussing how I believe science and religion coexist

• The Big Bang and the creation by God are similar

• Think about how the creation happened in Genesis, it is stated that it all happened within one “week”, while we don’t know what time space this week happened in. It could have been within a day or a month in our time, when it could be a week in God’s time. Scientists believe that we had a fireball explosion creating the beginning of the universe. Thus, how could one overlook a possibility of these two controversial subjects coexisting at the same time, both having correct information. (Morrow, 1979)

1. My worldview

• Love, Grace and Service

• I want to keep my worldview simple with its message. I believe that there are 3 things that become most important to God the first one being love. When I think of God the first thing I think of is love, God is love. He gives us love and expects us to give love as well. This is the first message of my worldview, I try to choose to love people even when they are against my view or belief. Be gracious, give more than what you are receiving. I used to believe strongly in paying tithing because anytime I would do so, I would see hugely important blessings in my life, but when I moved out of my hometown I saw so much suffering in the world and decided the most I can do is donate my time, or my money to people. I am grateful for what I have and I try to remember that others don’t have the basic necessities that I have. Jesus always acted in service, he showed his love to those around him and those in need, he showed us what we need to do to serve. Showing people our simple kind acts of service shows us who we are truly. I try every day to live by these 3 simple words and to make a difference in the world around me.

1. My understanding on the origin of the universe according to my worldview

• God had a hand in creating the universe

• I believe that God did create us and everything in our world, but I also know that evolution happened to many of the creatures on the earth, including us. I know that God is an all-powerful being who can create and destroy things at whim. I know he always has a hand in everything we do. However, I also believe scientific theories that discuss the creation such as the big bang, and evolution.

1. My view and belief on God

• God is understanding

• I think the one thing that always stands out to me about God is that he is understanding. He loves us so much that he created a way for us to come back to him no matter how much we screw things up. He is understanding of our silly humanity tendencies that can pull us into sin. But knowing how understanding he is because he is the one who created us, makes us understanding to remember that we can always make a change in our lives for the better.

1. What I believe humanities importance is

• Learn, Grow, and live according to his plan

• I believe that we are to grow in knowledge of all things in this world, to me knowledge is the most important thing we can have because it’s the one thing that no one can take away from us. Learning is the one accomplishment that helps is to grow in our knowledge of the world and the universe. Many people are taking these steps including those of us in this class. We are gaining the knowledge of the world around us. One of our other steps in humanity according to God is to have a family and to grow with them. We are to teach our children to live these ways as well. It’s very important for us to follow Gods plan for us because it can lead to an overall satisfaction in life.

1. What I believe our responsibility to the earth is.

• To care for our earth and to see it through for future generations

• Our world needs lots of help to preserve these treasures for future generations, luckily there are already many plans in play for us to help our planet. We need to help the planet grow and be healthy. Throughout the generations and along with advancements in technology we are seeing the effects of our growth on the planet. We need to always be in mind of these steps that we need to be taking. Simple things like recycling, disposing of chemicals correctly, being conscious of our water use and taking initial steps to lower our carbon footprint can help us to care for our planet and help it to be preserved for future generations.

1. My final overall thoughts and putting it all together.

• Overall view on our origin and the origin of the universe

• As a final word on this topic, I want to leave you with this. My views define who I am and the way I process information. These also define the way I search for truths and what I believe. I think we should always keep in mind that just because crazy theories sound strange, we are here to learn the truth. While many people believe in one way the universe was created, I believe in multiple theories that can coincide. I want people to remember to keep their minds open to other ideas.

1. References.

Cartwright, J. (2017). THE BIG BANG: Did the mass-giving particle make the universe too. (Cover story). New Scientist, 234(3129), 30–33. 

Lane, A. N. S. (2013). Is the truth out there? Creatures, cosmos and new creation (Part two). Evangelical Quarterly, 85(1), 3–18.

MILONE, E. F. (2008). SOLAR SYSTEM ASTROPHYSICS: Background science and the inner solar system. NYC, NY: SPRINGER.

Morrow, L. (1979). In The Beginning: God And Science. Time, 113(6), 149.

The Holy Bible, King James Version. New York: American Bible Society: 1999; Bartleby.com, 2000.