We have been brainwashed with a quasi-scientific paradigm of the world. A materialistic conception that reduces all things to mechanics and mathematics, including humans. A paradigm is a map that we keep in our head of how things work, a broad concept of the world that tells us where we are and what we are and consequently what we should be doing here.
We are led to believe by the scientific authorities that the earth is a ball floating through the empty vacuum of space at mind-bending speeds and that everything in existence is the result of an accident, a mistake, a random throw of a dice. The bible presents an alternative paradigm.
According to the first book of Genesis, God created the heaven and the earth. Heaven is the world where God and his angels live, earth is just a dark pool of water and rock. After this God creates a light to separate darkness and light - creating night and day. This first light is not the sun, it is the light above the water. After this he makes a firmament inside the water. The firmament is basically an enclosure, an immense solid container submerged in water. The firmament is placed in the water (previously called earth) and divides the water above and below the firmament. The firmament he calls heaven because from our perspective it is heaven, the one we see above us.
He lowered the water level inside the firmament so that solid ground could rise above the water level and he made plant-life to grow on the surface of the earth. After that he created the sun, moon and stars inside the firmament. After that he made marine and avian life and at last he made beasts of the earth including man.
The world we live in is an enclosed system designed specifically to sustain various kinds of life and it was designed by God. In my mind, a random explosion in an infinite vacuum of space could never form a single planet with an atmosphere let alone a single species of living organisms. But, I suppose one has to place his faith in chance if he eliminates the certainty of God.
