Talk:Gerald Schroeder/Comments

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In recent communication with Dr Schroeder, he asked this response be given to the critics of his calculation that six days of creation as described in Genesis is approximately 14-15 billion years.

"In calculating the age of the universe based on biblical data, Schroeder uses neither gravity nor velocity relativistic effects. The calculation, based totally on the expansion of space, a concept totally accepted in cosmology, in brief flows as follows. The Talmud (ca. the year 400) in the section HaGigah tells us that the six days of Genesis from the creation of the universe to the creation of Adam form a separate calendar from the time after Adam, the first human but not the first human-like being according to the Talmud, Maimonides (ca. 1190) and Nahmanides (ca. 1250). The Kabalist Nahmanides writes that his teachers taught that the numbering of each of the six days shows that for these six days, the perspective of time is seen from near the creation looking forward rather than back into history as we do. The numbering goes: day one, a 2nd day, a 3rd day etc. So why day one and not a first day he asks. And explains the Bible writes ‘day one’ because for its view, there had not yet been a 2nd day. That is the Bible for these days sees time looking forward from near the beginning. Then Nahmanides proceeds and expands. The clock of the Bible starts when stable matter forms from the energy of the creation. Time is created at the creation, Nahmanides writes, but the clock of the Bible starts only when stable matter forms. (“When matter forms, time grabs hold,” to use his wording). That moment is the energy level of protons. The ratio of the scale or the energy level or the temperature of space between then and now is nominally a million million according to astronomy text books. Projecting the estimated age of the universe as viewed from our perspective back to the biblical perspective requires a compression of time by this million million factor. That compression, blue shifting is the jargon in astronomy, reduces the 14 to 15 billion year age as per NASA to approximately five and a half days. The days remain 24 hours each, as “the days of our work week” again to quote Nahmanides, but “contain all the days of the world.” And they do."

Gerald Schroeder