The scientific discipline of astro-physics teaches a star is formed through a process by which dense parts of molecular clouds collapse into a ball of plasma. Plasma, simply stated, is a gas-like entity. Like gas, plasma does not have a definite shape or a definite volume. The Genesis creation account perhaps teaches a similar concept.
Genesis 1.1-2 states, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.” Notice what verses 1b-2a, “God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep.” At the outset, God brought into being a formless, unseeable void; this formlessness was originally inert or inactive. Thus, since the formless void was not producing energy, no light existed.
Then, God declared, “Let there be light.” The light God called into being did not just magically appear, but resulted from God’s causing the inert plasma cloud, the formless void, to begin acting within and upon itself. So, energy was produced and light appeared. The light God caused was “separated” from the darkness. When we see pictures of our universe, the separation of light from darkness is evident. On earth, the radiated energy of the sun does not become light until interaction with our atmosphere takes place.
The next step in the creative process involved the separation of the waters. What were the waters and in what context did they exist? Let’s consider Uranus, one of the ice planets of our solar system. Uranus is composed primarily of rock and various ices, with only about 15% hydrogen and a little helium (in contrast to Jupiter and Saturn which are mostly hydrogen). Uranus (and Neptune) are in many ways similar to the cores of Jupiter and Saturn minus the massive liquid metallic hydrogen envelope. It appears that Uranus does not have a rocky core like Jupiter and Saturn but rather that its material is more or less uniformly distributed.
When earth was in the early stages of creation, the planets composition could have consisted in a manner similar to Uranus. Earth could have been an ice planet with its material distributed throughout the ice-ball. Earth’s earliest form could have been as an ice planet. At that point, the statement of Genesis 1.6, “Let there be an expanse (open sky) in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters,” easily could be understood. Thus, God could have, as a step in the creative process, brought together the material parts of the earth into a ball and “separated” the water, or melted the ice, to create the oceans and an atmosphere filled with water vapor.
This separating of the waters was followed by what is described in verse 9: “Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear; and it was so.” As the waters were differentiated, the matter distributed throughout the water would have coalesced due to gravity to form a solid mass. The matter would have been great enough to create great energy in its coming together. Further, the mass would have been great enough to rise above the water, forming a continent. A theory does exist describing this first land mass: the continent of pangaea.
Pangaea , from Ancient Greek pan "all, entire", and gēs "Earth" (Latinized as Gæa), was the supercontinent that is theorized to have existed during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras about 250 million years ago, before the component continents were separated into their current configuration. (Note the accompanying figure on sidebar.) The name was first used by the German originator of the continental drift theory, Alfred Wegener, in the 1920 edition of his book The Origin of Continents and Oceans (Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane), in which a postulated supercontinent Pangaea played a key role. The single enormous ocean which surrounded Pangaea is known as Panthalassa.
Science and the Bible do find common ground. In the beginning of earth’s existence, one large land mass existed surrounded by a vast ocean. What the Bible adds is the existence of an atmosphere so filled with water vapor as to constitute a cloud cover enveloping the whole of the planet. Such an idea is not preposterous at all. Venus, considered to be Earth’s sister planet, is a solid mass covered by a thick cloud cover. Earth still has clouds, but they are less dense now than they would have been in the early stages of planetary development.
From here, we will look at the implications of earth originally consisting of a single continent surrounded by a vast ocean and covered wholly with water vapor clouds.
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