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I don't know enough of that period but could it be that an atmosphere capable of retaining water could have also have formed before the sun's reaction began?
I don't think so. Certainly, there was no Earth. Earth formed as a collection of matter accreting through gravity which was too far from the gravity pull of the concentration of matter that was in the process of becoming the Sun to be pulled into it. It was hundreds of millions of years between that event and the oceans starting to form, as far as anyone can tell.
So, there was no water before the Big Bang, nor was there any water before the formation of the Sun. There were also no birds before the formation of the Sun, pretty obviously, and the Sun and Moon came into being at vastly different times.
Despite all this, if you're keen enough to believe that everyone had a knowledge of the actual process through which the universe was created, and the creation myths are attempts to articulate that knowledge, imperfectly, through the lens of their limited science, then these things can probably be integrated into that vision. However, there are a load of different creation myths, with similar elements but different timelines - Babylonian myth has the earth and the dome of sky created at the same time, Norse myth has rain, sky, clouds, earth and so on all created from the body of a giant, which had been licked into shape to start with by a cosmic bear, and so on.
However, these conclusions could, it seems to me, have been reached deductively just as easily. I am an ancient occupant of Asia Minor. I can see the sky above me, which is blue, much like the sea. It is very high, but appears to descend to meet the horizon on every side. It makes sense, then, that the Earth is flat and circular, and the sky is a dome sitting atop it, with water on or above it. If you travel far enough, you reach sea. It therefore makes sense that the land is ringed with Ocean. The Sun appears at the horizon and travels to the other horizon, so presumably it emerges either from the sea or from a gate in the dome of the sky and leaves the same way. If you dig a well, you reach water, so it makes sense to suppose that there is a freshwater sea under the disc of the earth which can be reached by digging. I was born at a certain point, before which all is darkness, I grew to adulthood and in my childhood things that are clear and defined now were unclear and undefined, so perhaps the world was not once, then became, and is now more defined than it was at first. And so on, basically.
Point being that aetiology does not require divinity. You can have a universe with or without a divine being, and you can have stories of the creation of the universe that bear some resemblance to the current scientific consensus without them being articulations of the current scientific consensus inherent within the human mind through the agency of God. |
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