Nokomenam, me I suppose, least part of me, it's my nick when I hang out in Yahoo religion chat rooms. Don't think it's all of me though, maybe a little of what I would like to be, really. I don't talk religion or faith with anyone in real life, heck, don't talk much to nobody about anything. But what Nokomenam believes is what I believe, or have come to believe, or am in the process of believing....

     Creation, generally related to the Judean-Christain-Islam faiths it seems like, you know, the Bibical Creation. Seldom hear people talk of the creation stories in other faiths, but that's cause I dont hang out in the right places to hear those other stories.
     Take the Hopi Indian story, something to do with a Spider leading us humans from underground to the upper world, or perhaps, the Nordic Vikings story of couple of gods fighting and the victor creates the universe from the entrails of his foe, you don't hear much talk about them kinds of creation stories. There's probably more, one for each of the faiths, still, it's the Bibical Creation most people discuss. Or is it argue about? You ever wonder why that is? Cause the others are obivously stories I think, Bibical Creation though... is it just another story?
     Aside from the fact that some religious writings need a beginning, that's basically what it's all about, a need to start somewhere, there's the premise that God is the Creator (see God section above). However, hidden away in the Bibical creation are the key steps in the process.
     Most people seem to argue it's one or the other, Creation or Evolution. That's cause people do literal interpretation of holy-sacred writings. That doesnt work for me, doing so hides the spirit of writings from the mind, literature is literature, full of allegories, metaphors, paradigms, parables and all the rest. Besides, why look in an ancient book of traditons and lore for answers when we got the original edition before us... all that is the universe itself.
     Anyway, back to the nitty gritty stuff of Bibical Creation. (You can get a Bible to look up the complete text, I'm not typing all that stuff here).
     In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
     Well, pooof, so much for the first 300,000 years. Everything was much just an opaque, primordial, soup of protons, electrons, neutrinios along with the hydrogen, helium and couple of other elements. Nuclear matter and radiation were interchangeable, photons were kinda reacting with elementary particles. Sounds pretty much like a deep, dark, formless void to me.
     And God said, Let there be light; and there was light.... Yom rishon, Sun
     At about the million year time mark the nuclear matter and radiation soup thinned out enough for the photons to freely travel through the universe. The photons lost energy and no longer reacts with matter. Sounds like light to me. This *light day and darkness night* thing isn't a reference to the day-night cycle, it's the concept of light itself, before there were stars to regenerate photons of light.
     And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters .... Yom sheni, Moon
     Ooooooo this is a toughie, *firmament* and *waters* stuff, got some over, under and dividing stuff too, geeeeshh. Has nothing to do with evolution of the universe. God creates Heaven, the spirit dimension as compared to the Earth, the physical dimension.
     The concept of the universe, in the earliest times of human history, was the heavens {night sky} and the Earth {the planet}. The heavens was this kinda mystical, awesome place where strange things happened. Wandering stars, phasing white spheres, blinding bright hot sun were up there. The kinda place where a mystical, awesome God would live.
     The *waters above the firmament* that be the heavens, the *waters below the firmament* that be the Earth, fersur. The *firmament* that be the "ether" {space} which kinda provides a substience for everything to have a place to be in. It holds the heavens up in the sky, it gives the Earth something to sit in. The *firmament Heaven* that be the spirit aspect of the ether, Heaven is everywhere in the universe.
     What did God do for the next billion years after He turned the light on?
     There's mostly hydrogen in the universe, has been since the beginning, there's helium too. Gravity has been seperate and operating since 10^-43 of a second. Gravity {firmament} pulls matter {waters} together over the next billion years dividing matter {waters} from matter {waters} leaving ether {firmament} 'twixt and 'tween. Matter coalesces into proto-galaxies, proto-stars and proto-planets, more dividing of *waters from waters*. After the planets formed and firmed up a lot, there's more *waters from waters*. Planets were still hot, the atomsphere opaque with steam, the planets chilled out, started to rain for a few thousands years, covered the planets with water, real water this time.
     The story fast forwards some 5 billion years, starts talking about the first planets.
     And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let dry land appear.... Yom shlishi, Mars
     God kicks in plateonics, volcanoism, tosses a few meteors and comets at the planets and otherwise stirs up the primordial ooze. Land, dirt type earth this time, rises, waters get divided again and renamed seas and oceans.
     Vegetation type life appears. Yeah I know it's out of order, sort of, early humans were more familar with land life than sea life I think. And there's this *seed* thing, seeds of life. Minerals and other nutrients came from within the planet, washed out of the atomshpere, flowed into the oceans; got stirred, boiled, pressure cooked, electrified. God's playing bio-chemist, working on amnioacids, seeds for all of life.
     And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night.... Yom ravii, Mercury
     While God's got the pressure cooker on the stove boiling out seeds of life, He twiks up the heavens.
     Now comes the real *light day and darkness night* cycle. God spends a couple billion years working on stellar and planetary mechanics, things like orbits and rotation, spin axis tilts, star planet distances, star life cycles, blah, blah, blah. God blows up a few billion stars in the process, tosses some of the heavier elements into the pressure cooker. He likes the spinning revolving things, makes moons to obit the planets to go around the stars which circle around in the galaxies, tres kewl stuff.
     And God said, Let the waters bring forth abudantly the moving creature that hath life, .... Yom hamishi, Jupiter
     God has the right combination of star-planet mechanics and seeds of life, that oozie soup with amino acids and stuff, now. He spends the next 2 or 3 billion years mucking around with the nucleric acids, proteins, enzymes and all the other gouey stuff.
     The vegetation thing two days ago, maybe out of place, maybe not, don't really know, don't know if it makes much diff either. Life started in the oceans, plant life and animal life, supposedly evolved from ocean to land. Maybe some kind of parallel process this plant life, sea and land plant life evolving simultaniously. Lakes and pools of the soup scattered about the earth function the same as the big oceans, tends to lead to land base plant life sooner. Who knows?
     And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, .... And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.... Yom shishi, Venus
     So, ocean life evolved into land life. Two parts to this one, first the animal life and second human. Ooooooo again, another biggie, heap of arguing over this second part.
     Sea life evolved to amphibean life evolved to reptilean life. Then kaboooom, God bonks the Earth with a really huge meteor or comet, the K-P boundary thing, the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. Yeah I know, could have been a spurt of volcano activatity too, either way no more big animals.
     Mammal life gets its chance. God twiks up the DNA-RNA genetic mutations over the next 100 million years, finally gets what He wants, something that can think and be creative.
     And God blessed the seventh day, and sancitified it: because that in it He had rested from all his work which God created and made. Shabbat, Saturn
     End of Creation? God worked for six days and then retire for Eternity? Nope don't think so. No one ever wonders what God did the next week. Although Deism does teach that he kicked the universe in the butt to get it started and then sat back in His rocking chair to watch.
     God is still twikking on things, has been since that first planet with life on it came into being some 10 billion years ago. Blows up stars occassionally to replenish the heavy elements in the system, cooks up new seeds of life on other planets, slips galaxies through each other.
     Yet He still finds time to take an interest in the individual lifes that are created.