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Sunday, February 6, 2011

A literal interpretation of the Bible, and the Fermi paradox

According to some literal interpretations of the Bible, the world is only a few thousand years old.

Here's the math. One day to God is like 1,000 years. God created the world in six days plus one day of rest. That equals 7,000 years. Then Adam and Eve were born or hatched or created about 4,000 BC, and we're all currently at 2,011 AD, so that's 6,011 more years, so Earth has been around for 13,011 years, as far as I can tell. Please note that I didn't actually consult a Bible in coming up with this literal interpretation of the Bible.

The Fermi paradox basically says that it's paradoxical that we haven't yet found evidence of aliens. Assuming there are trillions of aliens on thousands, if not millions, of planets in our galaxy, why haven't we seen any yet? That's the paradox.

Another way of asking Fermi's antinomy is, why hasn't SETI, the alien-hunter organization who's scanning the skies for radio waves from distant planets, found any alien radio waves with alien signals? As Khan said, "Let them eat static!" So far, after years of listening to radio waves, all the SETI folks have heard is static.

If we consider a literal interpretation of the Bible, we have an answer for the Fermi paradox.

But, first, I should explain how Earth can be only thirteen thousand years old, when we have hard evidence, in the way of fossils and other rocks, that proves Earth is millions or billions of years old. God actually created Earth in only one thousand years. The rest of the time, God spent making plants and humans and stuff. So, to create Earth in a thousand years, he couldn't have used volcanoes and tectonic plates and all of that other stuff that scientists talk about. God must have a huge Earth-O-Matic™ machine that he used to fabricate Earth. Think about it, if God's all powerful, then he can certainly build a Jupiter-sized factory somewhere in the galaxy that makes to-scale models of Earth, starting with just digital plans and a lot of spare matter, and make this Earth complete with fossils that seem millions of years old, and a bunch of fossil fuels ready for our use, and accomplish all that in only a thousand years.

This means that dinosaurs didn't really exist. There simply wasn't time enough for God to let them roam around and evolve. At least on this earth.

Somewhere, sometime, in another solar system, billions or trillions of years ago, dinosaurs probably existed. But as soon as God got the Earth evolution template correct, complete with fossil fuels, he probably digitized that planet, and sent the plans back to his Jupiter-sized factory, and started mass producing these perfect Earth planets. One of those, our Earth, got delivered to our solar system. And within a few of God's long days, Adam and Eve were busy getting busy.

This should explain every inconsistency between science and a literal interpretation of the Bible.

Back to the Fermi paradox. Obviously God doesn't want us to interact with aliens, for some divine reason. So, after he created Earth, he whisked it away to a solar system that had the least likelihood of receiving radio waves from inhabited planets. God obviously has the most powerful computer available to any being in the universe, so he could have easily done the calculation on which solar system in the whole galaxy would be least prone to pesky alien radio waves.


Thus, the answer to the Fermi paradox, which is that God put us in a very statistically unlikely position in the galaxy to be able to communicate with aliens.

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Photo purchased from iStockphoto.

3 comments:

  1. And here I thought that the earth was created by a race of pan-dimensional beings as a living super-computer designed to calculate the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything. I guess I shouldn't believe everything I read.

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  2. Hmm, good point. Maybe all of that pan-dimentional being stuff happened a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, and God borrowed those blueprints, made the Earth (according to my blog above), and turned off the computational functionality.

    Or, maybe it's still on.

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  3. A physicist figured out how the Earth can be thousands of years old and billions of years old at the same time. He had his formula up on a black board and was explaining it to a Rabi that hosted the, "Naked Archeologist" show that was on History Channel. The basic idea was time dilation. The velocity that matter moved from the point of origin was such that looking back at the point of origin billions of years passed but looking out from the point of origin thousands of years had passed. His formula worked out to the days +or- a bit.

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