Everything was grand for a thousand million years.  The bacteria civilizations had smarmy politicians and slinky hedge fund managers and a population of suckers the shady ones could prey on.  The skies were dark and there was no political transparency and sweet rottenness ruled.  Bacterial paradise, microbial Eden.  Then there was a problem.  There arose a demographic of radical-spawning biochemical upstarts.  There were those among the bacterial citizenry who shouted warnings and said “We’d better put a stop to these radical-spawning green slime-mongers.”  Virtually everyone ignored the alarmists, being happy with the seemingly endless profits of muck and filth.  Did not the oceans still run yellow with sulfuric acid?  Were not the rocky shores yet the riveting green of reduced iron?  Verily!  But the radicals persisted, until after another billion years something began to happen and then it was too late.  The air became thick with a choking poison gas.  The reduced green iron began to precipitate out like drops of blood congealing into rocks, and finally the worst of all imaginable things occurred.  The very skies burst into fire and with a blinding white light everything on land and in the sea was destroyed—except for the stromatolites, that is.  Stromatolites are the earliest form of plants and they still exist in Australian tidal flats.  The stromatolite kings overcame and ruled the world for a thousand years, and then they were frozen in an ice ball.

I am not off my medication.  (Not yet.)  This is a true story supported by the fossil record as well as the genetic one. For billions of years the anaerobic bacteria ruled.  But then photosynthetic blue-green algae came along and started pumping out oxygen.  It was oxygen that was the new deadly gas.  How about a quick lesson in physiology?  (Say “yes.”)  When we eat food we take the energy that is in sugar and extract it one electron at a time.  We then need some place to put that used electron so it doesn’t gum up the bodyworks.  Oxygen is a very reactive element that readily accepts homeless loser-electrons.  Most creatures today use oxygen as their electron acceptor of choice but oxygen is a poison to the filthy muck-sucking ones ( FMSOs).  They were driven into the farthest reaches of every disgusting crevice and crack where they await their chance to eat us alive.  Geologically, the oxygen revolution formed the largest deposits of iron ore on the planet.  From the standpoint of the MSFOs (muck-sucking filthy ones) it was the worst environmental disaster ever recorded.  They should have listened to the doomsayers.  On the other hand (fortunately there is always another other hand), for the BOLOs (beings of light and oxygen) it was a chance to reach for the golden crown.³

Professor Loose in search of the MFSOs!

I guess this means we are back to the big time debate again, a few Biblical days versus a few billion cosmological years. Let me say again it is not my objective to disprove the validity of the first chapter of Genesis, rather to show how it is valid and consistent with science.  It is a question of being either literally literal or a little literal, or of literalness with a little latitude.  To be literally literal one would have to say that prior to the fourth day there was no sun and no moon or stars because it is written that on the fourth day God made the sun and the moon and the stars.  This literal interpretation does leave a little to be desired.  For one thing, by definition (a literal definition) a literal 24-hour period of a day is defined by the rotation of the earth relative to…um… the sun…  If the sun did not exist the first 3 days then they were not literal days.  For that matter the earth itself didn’t exist until the second day.

Literalness with a little latitude would allow that the Earth was not hurtling though space but must have been orbiting around something, presumably the sun.  Why then does scripture say the sun and the moon were made after the making of the plants, when the plants themselves need sunlight?  It sounds much like bad government planning.  Well, do you remember about photosynthesis and how prior to the time of plants the atmosphere was nothing but clouds of methane gas, sulfuric acid, ammonia and dust (lots of dust because there were no plants to hold dust in place)?  Have you ever tried to see the sun or the moon or the stars in Los Angeles on a bad traffic day?  In contrast the plants cleaned up the atmosphere so the sun and the moon etc. could become visible (that is why you can see more stars in the country⁵)⁶.  Our atmosphere is bright because there are dust particles and molecules to reflect light.  Our atmosphere is blue because that is the color of oxygen.  Nitrous oxides are red, and I remember seeing the skies of Los Angeles being cherry red before catalytic converters were put on cars.  Now the LA sky is a nice beige.⁷

It is important to understand the fundamental (not fundamentalist) importance of plants being the first thing (second after bacteria) to have been evolved/created.  Prior to the presence of plants terrestrial life would not have been possible.  Not only do plants make oxygen which is necessary for larger life forms, but without oxygen there would be no ozone layer.  It is the ozone layer that blocks ultraviolet light.  Ultraviolet light in high enough doses kills all life forms.  Even the stromatolites themselves live in water which blocks a lot of lethal UV.  I would wish you to consider also that ultraviolet is what they use to clean bowling shoes.

In all other creation "mythologies" there is some great bird that took a dump or a man who spat in his hand, or a fantastic coon dog that treed the biggest imaginable coon.  Here we are talking about plants being the first things.  The squirmy, squishy, squeaking things will have to wait another billion years.   Not very exciting, probably would not be Hollywood's choice.  Plants are crucial to the beginning and surviving of life. Hail to the BOLOs!  (By which of course one means Beings of Light and Oxygen.) 

[Concluding exchange…]⁸