If as science suspects the Big Bang occurred from something the size less than the size of a proton and that space and time did not exist. If that in a somewhere that was no where it is asked by non believers where was God? Where could He stand? Where could He be if nothing existed?
The problem is not what is asked but how the question is posed.

The bible is rife with the male identification of God. God the Father, Father, He, Him, His, proliferate the writings put down by the original Hebrews and those who followed. I sure any response to this essay will tell me how the word of God as written is inviolate, it is motivated by God to the mind of the writers. They will point out how Jesus said, 'my Father in heaven','I am doing the work of my Father who sent me', how the Great Commission implores the followers of The Christ to baptize in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, all of this and more. They will be correct and wrong.

Num 23:19 God is not a man, that he should lie, Neither the son of man, that he should repent: Hath he said, and will he not do it? Or hath he spoken, and will he not make it good?

Five words have always stuck with me from this verse found in the book of Numbers. Is it poor exegesis to only consider just those words? If we substitute another possible meaning that of mortal.
So God is not a enosh (mortal) we get closer to what I see, have seen and was revealed to me.
For God to be omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent God can not have any remotely human like identity.

God can only be God.
Gen 1:26 And he said: Let us make man to our image and likeness: and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth.
Gen 1:27 And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them.
People, it seems have reversed the identity, such that we are not in the image and likeness of God but that God is in the image and likeness of us. There is a tendency to look at God through our characteristics, attributes and limitations. We are constrained by language because when you try to describe the limitless with a limited cognitive tool, that is language, we fail, miserably, that is what faith is about not dealing in the explanation.

I hope that is kind of clear to get back to my main point of God and the Big Bang.
So how does science square with the Biblical description of creation. Where it falls short is in the description of time and space. You cannot describe what you do not know or have any conception of being.

How long is a day for a O3 cubed being, does the concept of day even exist when there is no planetary existence. Days are measurements based on planet rotation and then there are lunar months and solar years. All based on the relationship of objects in space in relation to each other. Even with now disproven idea of the moon and sun rotating around a stationary earth the concept of time is man made. So is the idea of day. That God could create whatever in any time period God decides to choose is not an impossible idea for believers. The thing is we have collected knowledge, I won't say advanced because I am not sure we as a species have advanced, that points us in directions not thought of by the Hebrew writers.

Could the bible read
In the beginning God created the universe and after twelve and a half billion earth years God created the earth. As God watched the earth form as many planets do, God decided there should be life. God programmed the earth to bear genetic material and life began. As if in a pot life cooked, each ingredient blending and adding to the mix.
As God has foreseen the earth should be populated by a human species. And God spoke to the council, which God had created, and said let us create a being with sentience and thus is will be like us.

So in the short time span of four point five billion years we get humans. Currently on the outside we have creatures that contain our genome markers that are about three to four million years old. So no matter how you measure it human have been here only a short amount of time.

In that short time span, even if only five thousand years our knowledge of what is around us, where we live, what is the composition of this space we live in has changed. If one clings to a strict biblical understanding of this world it has to change based on the evidence presented. The geological age of rocks, fossils and other objects are provable with the correct education, and some equipment. Fossils can be found. Because science, unlike religion is based on the reproducibility of observations science has a different way of passing knowledge.

The amount of time it takes light to get from point A to B is reproducible. That gives the distance between objects. Since we can now literally follow the Sun or moon we can fly around this globe, and the higher we go the more we see it is an oblate spheroid on which we live. The curvature of the earth was known in the time of the Hebrew but the creatures that existed before the Hebrew were not known, the people who live in the same time period but in areas unexplored by anyone the Hebrews had contact with were not known but they still lived. What the Hebrews called the world was a very small portion of the planet. They only were aware of so far north and south and east and west and what was outside of that did not exist.

Space was not a concept with out which the earth system in the solar system in a galactic arm of the Milky Way in our visible universe (with instruments) was not something that would enter into the writes of the bible. We have to deal with what they knew and what their limits were and with the grace of God within us move forward.

There is no need to change the bible or to disbelieve what is written, a term, sitz im leben, or setting in life or situation in life is how the Hebrews have to be taken. Did God inspire the writers, I believe so.
Could the writers write out side of their experience, their sitz im leben, no they could not.
So a patriarchal society identifies God as He and says God is our Father. The concept of a being of pure energy is hinted at when Moses and God are on the mountain. That idea is quickly lost in the need to identify God with us. That is the problem. Gone is the thought of in the image of God and now God is in the image of us. Of course that is never said but except in moments of stress is God lifted above the mortal view. As above I know, there are many passages where human nature is not in the forefront but humans are just too full of themselves and hubris reigns.

As human knowledge of who and where we are in time and space increases it does not mean that biblical knowledge is supplanted or denied. As one oriented in science I am grounded in my God.
My life is full of miracles, the grace and mercy of God fills my life experience I deny nor separate either. They do not hold separate places in my life as each fulfills a role, as does the teachings of others who do not believe as I do but who (to me) clearly worship God.

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