Monday, June 3, 2013

How Our Earth Came To Be

The first segment of the three-part global climate change presentation is about the origin and evolution of the earth-climate system. This is one of the most intriguing aspects of our atmosphere because--as the presentation states--it has not always been inhabitable.

Before getting into the theology of our planet, let's briefly summarize how our modern atmosphere came to be. When Earth began, it was literally just a rock in space with a thin atmosphere devoid of oxygen and water (most of the hydrogen and helium was lost due to solar radiation). Scientists say that, over millions of years, frequent seismic activity caused a mass outgassing from volcanoes, which primarily spew H20. With water vapor being introduced into the atmosphere, weather started occurring; over billions of years, the oceans were formed as more and more water was added to and precipitated out of the atmosphere. Once the oceans were formed, life sparked. Photosynthetic organisms evolved in the oceans and started emitting oxygen! Early on, life was still unable to exist on land, as the direct UV radiation from the sun was still too strong for species to survive. However, as the plant-emitted oxygen reached the stratosphere, the molecules were torn apart by the UV and came back together in the form of ozone, thus forming the protective ozone layer!  Finally, life was able to evolve on land and the rest is history.


Whew, now enough science. The origin and evolution of the atmosphere is one of my favorite topics, as it truly shows the presence of God. Considering my description above is a condensed version of the atmosphere's formation, you can imagine how immensely complex the actual process was. Now imagine if any one of those steps in that process were to have not occurred. Would we be here? No. Why did all of those steps have to occur? And why did they occur in that exact order? The formation of our now habitable home is the most perfect recipe ever concocted. It baffles me how He knew what He was doing the entire time. One of the most amazing things about the Catholic church is that it works so beautifully in conjunction with science. If people ask me how I know God exists, the answer is as simple as pointing at a tree, or at a cloud (though I highly doubt the questioner will be satisfied with that kind of answer). It's odd to think that your faith can blossom in a science lecture at one of the country's most liberal (as the stereotype goes) universities.

Another neat thing that came to me when I was sitting in lecture hearing about the origin of the atmosphere is that the sequential nature of this process is not terribly dissimilar from Genesis. Let's recap the days of Genesis:
1) Light
2) Waters
3) Land
4) Sun, Moon, and stars
5) Sea creatures and birds
6) Animals and man
Obviously it's not a perfect fit (that would be too easy, right?), but there really are some interesting parallels. Light should definitely be first, as the sun has always been around; however, Earth's early atmosphere would not have been transparent as it is today (with all the water, etc), thus "light" would come first and the individual sources--sun, moon, and starts--would not be distinctly visible until the atmosphere cleared up. The oceans did indeed for in their own event. The creation of land could perhaps be analogous to plate tectonics, which I believe only occurred once the Earth's surface cooled. Sea creatures came first, followed by land and air creatures and eventually humans.

Like I said, it really isn't the smoothest analogy; however, if you substitute "day" with "millions and millions of years," it really isn't terribly far off. More importantly, Genesis is key to our faith because it demonstrates that without His divine power and love, we would not have such a pristine planet to inhabit. This is where the clearest analogy lies--both in the Bible and in scientific explanation for our planet's evolution: we could not exist without the absolutely extraordinary series of events, each more amazing than the last, that were concocted and executed by His holy hand.

I understand this was highly scientific and had little to do with individual implications. However, the next two parts of the presentation delve into our personal responsibility to maintain the home that we were given dominion over (also Genesis!) and what the real consequences of anthropogenic activities may be.
So stay tuned for those! Praise God!

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