Mr. Gehr uses his science class to talk about the beginning of the universe… or is he misusing it to attack the beliefs of Iimi and her friends by means of The Universe, Galileo, & all that…
Preliminary Notes:
286 Human intelligence is surely already capable of finding a response to the question of origins. The existence of God the Creator can be known with certainty through his works, by the light of human reason, even if this knowledge is often obscured and disfigured by error. This is why faith comes to confirm and enlighten reason in the correct understanding of this truth: “By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was made out of things which do not appear.”(Catechism of the Catholic Church #286)
Unfortunately, certain people insist that EVERYTHING in the Bible is supposed to be taken literally. So they rely on an English translation without allowance for language, context, culture, or genre. But not everything in the Bible is intended to be read as history.
Hebrew words like yom (יוֹם) and ʾāreṣ (אֶרֶץ) are commonly translated as “day” and “world,” respectively. But Hebrew has a broader meaning than those English terms. So, we’re not stymied by people who insist that the world is over six thousand years old or there is no evidence of the Flood covering the entire planet.
Like Iimi, I accept the Bible as true and view the Catholic Church as the authentic interpreter. I accept that God is the creator of all that has existed. These views come from what the Church has had to say on the subject. Anyone who reads the comic and thinks, “She’s saying the Bible is in error,” has missed the point.
All of my information on the Hebrew meaning of words comes from HALOT (The Hebrew-Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament). It’s considered the standard modern dictionary for Biblical Hebrew.
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