I hardly started reading chapter 5 of Hawking and Mlodinow’s
The Grand Design again this afternoon when I noticed something that I must have
missed before. The authors talk of story in the Bible where Joshua prays for
the sun and moon to stop in their trajectories so he would have extra daylight
to finish fighting the Amorites in Canaan. According to the book of Joshua the
sun stands still for about a day.
I must say, even if I take into account the couple of years
I attended Sunday School as a boy my knowledge of the Bible is certainly not
extensive. And, truth be told, it doesn’t much matter for the purpose of this.
I’ve always assumed a vague connection between a creator and the planet we live
on. It’s been more like “according to the bible God created everything.” Here,
we a have Joshua, needing God’s help.
According to Genesis 1:1 in the beginning God created the
heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness
was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved on the face of the
waters. And God said, let there be light: and there was light.
Clearly, God must have not only created the Earth and the
heaven, God must have created everything else as well - a God creating every
world. Here’s where I show my naivety. Why does Genesis limit God’s reach to earth
and not to all earths – all worlds.
