# *2 AF -Dr.Schroeder

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Posted by J.H. [JH] on November 27, 1999 at 04:08:53 {nwG7wj0NI.wxcT1WLj/AHR5JhS9/hc}:

In Reply to: 2 AF -Dr.Schroeder posted by Trojan on November 26, 1999 at 13:17:24:

Alas, I did not save AFs article on Schroeder. I think it appeared in a thread named "Another Big Bang for You" started February 22, 1999 by WW. I replied the following:

WW,

When I have a book recommended to me, I will usually check out the writer's articles or at least some abstract first.

I have read Dr. Schroeder's article about this subject on the Net.

In this article (which is a summary of the book), he says:

> - "The first of the Biblical days lasted 24 hours, viewed from the "beginning of time perspective." But the duration from our perspective was 8 billion years.
> - The second day, from the Bible's perspective lasted 24 hours. From our perspective it lasted half of the previous day, 4 billion years.
> - The third day also lasted half of the previous day, 2 billion years.
> - The fourth day -- one billion years.
> - The fifth day -- one-half billion years.
> - The sixth day -- one-quarter billion years."

I hope I'm not the only one seeing some serious problems with this.

According to this scheme, the 3rd creative day was the period 3.75-1.75 billion years ago. On that "day", according to the Bible, all land trees and plants were created. This is grossly contradicted by fossil evidence. Plants did not originate before 400 million years ago.

On the 4th day, that would be 1.75 billion to 750 million years ago, the sun, the moon and the stars were created according to Genesis. So much for that theory!

The 5th day was the period 750-250 million years ago, when birds were created. Birds are not that old. We are missing around a 100 million years.

It gets worse on the 6th day, which Dr Schroeder will place 250 million to 6000 years ago. According to the Bible, all the land animals, including reptiles, were created. But land animals existed at least 350 million years ago, and they definately existed long before the birds that came on day 5.

Dr Schroeder, a nuclear physicist and a very religious Jew, are not the first one who tries to harmonise Genesis and modern science. It should perhaps be commended that he agrees with modern science about the age of the universe and the earth, and about the fact of evolution.

But when Dr Schroeder moves from the possibility that Genesis can be interpreted in "relativistic" terms (sounds very silly to me, but that's theology for you), and claims this is a scientific, not a religiously motivated conclusion, and even jumps to claim that this somehow proves that Genesis has a divine origin, well, he's obviously very deluded.

I notice that in his next book, he flatly claims that a texttual analysis of the Flood account in Genesis suggests a local flood. Well, a textual analysis requires first reading the text, and even a child will understand that a flood covering "all the mountains under the heavens" will have to be universal. There are no walls around the Middle East (it might be a good idea, but for somewhat other reasons).

A bit worrying for me is that to save the idea that Adam was created 6000 years ago while humanity is demonstrably much older, Schroeder claims that the human soul was created by God at that time. That would make not only all earlier humans into non-humans, it raises a serious question about whether Schroeder indeed will argue that native Americans and Australians, for example, who clearly have no kinship to a Middle East "Adam", would be sub-humans. I hope this is not his opinion. If it is, it would be similar to what "Christian Identity" groups say, and I would hate the though of Jew arguing such ideas.

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- **2 AF -Dr.Schroeder Trojan 05:14:03 11/27/99 (0)

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