Toads-in-the-Hole

I was sitting in church last Sunday, spacing out during one of the longer prayers (and what is it about those long prayers? Since childhood I’ve not been able to listen past the first twelve words or so.), and I thought the following about the Biblical version of Creation:

So, the Bible tells us that the first thing there was, was nothing. Right, first there was the Void. An infinite amount of nothing, stretching as far as the eye could see. Very hard to give directions, back then. Then, we are told, there was the Word. First nothing, then God spoke.
Before that, there was an eternity, or not, because there was no time, but I think we can agree that there was a significant pause in which there was silence. Right? Lots and lots of silence, no talking, then God spoke…. Do you think She went, “Ahem?”
Or “um?”
Do you think God went, “Ahem. Uh… Let there be light. Gah! My pupils!” Right? Because: very dilated eyes.
Which brings up an exciting theological paradox: Can God make a light so bright that He finds it necessary to wear shades?

The Void (artists rendering)

Such thoughts wandered around in my head for a while, until I came to the issue of the Age of the Earth. It’s been more in the news a little bit recently with the controversy about teaching Intelligent Design in schools, but all of my life I’ve known people who believe that the earth is very young for religious reasons. In elementary school it quickly became apparent which of my childhood friends with whom it was best not to talk about dinosaurs. But the age of the earth can also pop up in unexpected places. My mother was once enjoying a trail ride, horsing along in Newton Hills, one of eastern South Dakota’s few interesting geographical formations. She was admiring the landscape when the horseman in front of her said something along the lines of, “Of course, all that stuff about this place being carved out by glaciers is bunk!” She listened politely to his opinion for the rest of the journey.

So anyway, I was sitting there in church, thinking about the Young Earth:

Since religious scholars have determined the exact day that God created the earth, and as I recall it was Saturday “night”, October 22, 4004 BC [Okay, I looked that up on wikepedia later on], why the heck don’t we get a holiday for it? I mean on a federal level we get Christmas and Easter off, but every year October 23rd rolls around without a three-day weekend, and without even a peep from our church leaders, “…so thanks Cheryl, we’ll be sure to keep Chuck’s diverticulitis in our prayers. Oh, by the way, let us take a moment and thank God for making the world.”

Many of you may think that I’m being irreverent just for the fun of it, and I kind of am. But a little bit of internet research has revealed the results of a 1991 Gallup poll in which 47% of respondents believed in the world’s recent creation by God (with 39% of college students so agreeing). So I think any kind of October 23rd holiday would be widely observed, even among those college kids who aren’t sure about the world being created 6000 years ago.

Hindu peoples, I’m afraid, would be very much left out on October 23rd. Wikipedia says that Hindu scripture describes the universe as swinging through endless cycles of creation, each cycle lasing one lifespan of Brahma. The thing is, Brahma only dies once every 331 trillion years, and our current cycle is a little less than halfway done; our Brahma is a wise-but-still-vigorous 155 trillion years old, or about 51 in Brahma years.