| Questioning the Genesis Rainbow
Story
Thus, the author of Genesis is making it clear that
the Lord created the rainbow to mark the occasion of his grand covenant with
Noah and his sons. If Noah's rainbow hadn't been the very first, then
it's not likely that Noah would have been too impressed with this special
"token" of God's contract unless it was truly the grandest rainbow ever.
If that rainbow was the first one, then there's
a problem. Rainbows, as any first-year physics student knows, are created
when the various components (colors) of white light from the sun are
differentially refracted (bent) by water droplets, separated, and turned
back toward the viewer. If Moses' story is true, and if Noah's rainbow
had been the first rainbow ever to grace God's skies, then God for
more than a thousand years must have delayed placing into operation the laws
regarding the propagation of electromagnetic radiation (Maxwell's Equations).
Otherwise, there would have been countless other naturally-created rainbows
before the one he allegedly made for Noah. Such a delay, however, contradicts
the story in the first chapter of Genesis: God completed his job of
creation in the first six days, during which time he made the earth, heavens,
man, beasts, plants, and--presumably--all the laws of physics.
Inerrantists Explain Why It Was the First
Rainbow
Some creation scientists argue that there was no
sunshine on earth--and thus no possibility of a rainbow--until after the
flood--because the earth was under an all-earth cloud cover which blocked
every ray of sunlight since the day of creation until the great deluge.
The cloud cover persisted until the flood because there was no
wind to drive the clouds from the sky, and there was no wind because
there were no temperatures differences. There were no temperature
differences because there were no mountains to prevent the lateral flow of
temperature-equilibrating air currents. Thus, the verse which
speaks of god's first rainbow is proof that there were no mountains; at most,
there were hills no higher than about ten feet. After the flood came
the great upheaval which raised the mountains, including Everest, and
sucked in all that water. Or, something like that.
Better Harmonizations
There are at least two harmonizations inerrantists
could offer which are less complicated and more believable that their astonishing
cloud-cover explanation. Instead of asserting that earth's first
millennium was spent in semi-darkness, one could merely claim that the rainbow
spoken of in
Genesis
9:8-14 is not the first rainbow, but the very best rainbow, ever.
An alternative way for the inerrantists to harmonize the rainbow story is
to conjecture that God suspended the law of light refraction until shortly
after the flood.
Conclusion
It will probably never be clear what the Genesis
author had in mind when he told us the story of Noah's rainbow, but it seems
likely that he meant for us to believe that the bow created by the Lord was,
indeed, the very first rainbow. If it hadn't been the first rainbow, then
the entire story loses its symbolic impact--even if the bow had been the
best rainbow, ever. In order to explain how that rainbow could have
been the first one, inerrantists must explain how water droplets in the air
would not have refracted sunlight. There are three possibilities:
 No water
in the air
No sunlight
No law of refraction
The first possibility requires too many improbables:
no water condensation of evaporated lake and ocean water, no waterfalls,
and no rainfall. The second is just as unlikely as the first. Since
God let there be light on the first day, and created the sun on the fourth,
inerrantists would have to argue that there was a continual cloud cover from
the time of creation until just after end of the flood. The third explanation
might seem at first to be the simplest. All the inerrantist has to do to
harmonize the rainbow story is assert that God must have suspended his law
of refraction (bending) of electromagnetic radiation until he awarded Noah
his bow in the sky; if God can make Balaam's donkey talk with a wave of his
hand, he can certainly render one of his laws of physics inoperable.
The reason why the third explanation doesn't work
is that Noah and his family would not have been able to see without refraction;
all light through their eyes' lenses would pass right through to the retina
without bending to a sharp focus. Noah and his family would have been
living in a world filled with very blurry objects indeed, and they surely
would have noticed and reported the sudden change in clarity once God had
made the law of refraction operable. |
