Rethinking Genesis, Cosmology, and the Nature of Physical Law

One of the most common attempts to reconcile the biblical account of Creation with modern cosmology focuses on time itself. If the universe is 13.8 billion years old, how can Genesis speak of six days?

The most familiar answer, popular among religious thinkers open to science, is that time was not uniform. It flowed slowly at the beginning and faster later on. In this view, the “days” of Creation were not ordinary days at all, but vast cosmic epochs compressed by relativistic effects.

This approach, articulated most clearly by Gerald Schroeder, draws inspiration from Einstein’s relativity: time is not absolute, and extreme early-universe conditions could stretch the meaning of a “day” beyond human intuition.

But there is a deeper, more radical possibility, one that inverts the entire framework.

What if time did not change at all?

What if instead the laws of physics themselves evolved?

Two Opposite Ways to Reconcile Science and Genesis

Broadly speaking, there are two conceptual strategies:

1. Flexible Time, Fixed Laws
   Time is relative and elastic; physical laws are timeless and immutable.

2. Fixed Time, Evolving Laws
   Time is linear and constant; physical laws are not.

Most reconciliation models adopt the first strategy. But growing scientific anomalies are making the second option increasingly difficult to ignore.

When the Universe Misbehaves

Recent observations challenge the comforting picture of a smooth, orderly, deterministic cosmos.

Galaxies That Formed “Too Early”

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has revealed surprisingly large, bright, and structured galaxies just  200-500 million years after the Big Bang. Some appear far more mature than standard cosmology predicts.

These findings do not overthrow cosmology-but they strain it. Explanations now require:

• Faster-than-expected star formation

• Stronger early gravity

• Modified dark matter behavior

In other words, the early universe may not have followed the same rules we assume today.

A Forgotten Idea Returns: Evolving Laws of Nature

The idea that physical constants might change over cosmic time is not new.

In 1937, Paul Dirac proposed that fundamental constants could evolve. Modern observations constrain such changes tightly, but mostly for the recent universe. The earliest moments remain largely unconstrained.

And this is where a bold and underappreciated theory becomes relevant.

Lee Smolin and Cosmological Natural Selection

Physicist Lee Smolin offers a framework that aligns remarkably well with this alternative reading of Genesis.

In his theory of Cosmological Natural Selection (CNS), first presented in The Life of the Cosmos (1992), Smolin proposes:

• The universe is part of a larger multiverse. (on a personal note-I tend not to agree with that and I would suggest wormholes approach )

• New universes are born inside black holes. (same here - on a personal note- I would suggest that they impact laws of nature within our universe and not outside of it)

• Each “offspring universe” inherits physical constants with slight variations—cosmic mutations.

• Universes that produce many black holes reproduce more successfully.

• Over time, physical laws become selected for stability, complexity, and structure.

Crucially:

Time remains linear and real - but the laws evolve.

Personal note: In my view, a full multiverse framework may not be strictly required to explore Lee Smolin’s idea of evolving physical laws. If black holes are interpreted as regions where known physics breaks down—possibly involving wormhole-like structures or spacetime transitions—they could, in principle, act as environments in which physical parameters are altered, potentially influencing the effective laws of nature within our own universe. This remains speculative, but it does not necessarily require the existence of separate, causally disconnected universes

From Chaos to Order: A New Reading of Genesis

Seen through this lens, the Creation narrative takes on a striking new meaning.

The early “days” of Genesis need not describe changes in time itself. Instead, they may describe a universe not yet governed by stable laws.

Creation is not merely the appearance of matter, but the gradual stabilization of reality.

This resonates with modern cosmology:

• Early physics may have been fluid

• Constants may have “settled”

• Order emerged gradually

Genesis, then, becomes not a physics textbook, but a profound philosophical insight:

the universe did not begin fully formed - it became lawful.

A closing note on time: For any scientifically educated person, the question “What is time?” has no single, settled answer. It may be described as a fourth dimension, as an emergent property arising from deeper physical processes, or as something not yet fully understood. Time remains one of the deepest unresolved questions in physics, and it may well lie at the heart of the next major scientific revolution.

Alternative Thinking is not about replacing science or faith, it is about looking for the common

ground and about refusing to reduce either to simplistic answers. This article is proposing a thinking exercise rather than a new theory.