Bit by bit

One billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second.

It’s not a very long time. Difficult to measure with a cheapo stopwatch such as they use at elementary school sporting events. Not even enough to think about blinking. Can’t accomplish much at that speed, except perhaps create in full the universe as we know and love it.

I kid you not. According to this scientist who was expounding on the facts of creation, that’s how long it took to bring into being the cosmos, right down to every last jot and tittle, every grain of sand, every last follicle on your head.

One billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second. And he said it with a straight face. It was on one of those Morgan Freeman-narrated-type shows — wormholes, exploding super novas, cataclysmic end-ofworld events — all that. He was explaining how it all came to be. Of course, inquiring minds want to know. So I listened carefully.

The very first thing in creation, this man said, was the aptly named Big

Bang. Before that there was nothing. Zilch. Zippo. Then, out of nowhere, out of nothing, there was this humongous explosion. Every single piece of material that makes up the universe was sent flying into this great void. Everything from the smallest grain of sand in the Sahara to the largest rock on Topsail Beach was hurtled into space.

Apparently they had never heard the song “Something Good” from “The Sound of Music” — “Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could.”

I have a problem or two with this rather glib explanation of how it all came about, but that’s not the strangest part of the story. This scientist

then made the bland assertion that the creating process took exactly — you guessed it — one billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second!

I have never had much problem marrying the biblical account of creation with the scientific. For me, the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

So, in the past I have had both feet attached firmly to the top of the fence that runs between them. I have had confidence that the scientific community knows something of what it is talking about.

Likewise, those ancient wise men studying the desert stars saw and understood things that were only mysteries to others.

But now it’s a whole new ballgame. For lifetimes, it seems, we’ve been told by those wonderfully logical and knowledgeable scientific minds that the Genesis story was the product of primitive minds with no understanding of the sciences involved. A mixture of pity and derision shamed us into halfway believing them. Imagine, they snickered, believing that the universe was created in seven days, counting sick days. And just how long were those days supposed to be, anyway (grinning)?

So let me ask you this, you great minds of science. Exactly how naïve are you when you believe the whole of creation came about in exactly — I refuse to say it anymore.

Which is more credible to the inquiring mind in its search for truth and logic? Six days (with a weekend tacked on), or some totally incomprehensible span of time that means nothing to anyone including the mind that came up with it?

Most of us can relate to an average work week, having spent at least some part of our lives living it.

But these billionths of a second thing? Slightly beyond our grasp, which is why, of course, those old biblical characters would not use it.

They were primitive, not stupid. No, I’m afraid the scientific community has lost my support on this one with that wonderful estimate of how long it took to create everything. There was an Irish archbishop who studied that great list of “begats” in the Old Testament and came to the conclusion that the world is 6,000 years old. I

use to laugh at him, and the people who believed him, including a sizable portion of the followers of the Donald. Now I’m beginning to think I should consider his research in a new light.

That’s the secret of a truly educated mind. It is continually re-examining accepted truths and tossing out those that do not meet the rigorous standards of modern critical thought.

You have just witnessed a prime example of that very process.