Geology and divine creation

Siipis said:

True, I misspoke (miswrote?) about what would cause the difference in months. It would actually be dependant on how long it takes the moon to wax and wane. In a lunar calendar the months follow the phases of the moon (I prefer full moon). Our twelve months are based on the Roman system, which as far as I know was kind of lunar, but with a couple of extra days at the end of the year to stop the months from moving all over the calendar. If the moon is closer to the planet or further away from it, it changes how long it takes for the moon to orbit and therefore also changes the length of the lunar month.

Click to expand...

Oh, I see! I think that I misunderstood you. That makes sense, yes.

You could also base the months on something non-lunar. Our months may be lunar, but our weeks appear to be based on absolutely nothing -- well, okay, I expect there's some sort of religious explanation (each day being assigned to a Roman/Norse deity and whatnot), but it corresponds neither to the exact length of the month nor the lunar cycle itself. And the Mayans, for one, had calendars based on a number of different celestial cycles, Venus for example. You could do that too! Of course, then you have to come up with the rest of the solar system. This rabbit hole just keeps going down!

Speaking of planets, anyone come up with a reason why the planet couldn't be significantly smaller than ours? Let's say 30% smaller, for example?

Click to expand...

I don't think there's any reason why it couldn't be! Mars is, IIRC, about 1/3 the mass of Earth (hence the gravity is only 30% of Earth's) but it's similar in size and day length, and provides an excellent environment for Earth life (aside from, you know, that pesky lack of air problem ). You could either make the planet smaller with a corresponding reduction in gravity -- which wouldn't have to come up in the narration; the characters don't know any better -- or basically do the opposite of the Mars situation: have a planet that's denser than Earth, but has about the same mass, so it's correspondingly smaller. You would just have to keep in mind that reducing the planet's radius reduces the gravity by, uh, I think it's the reduction amount cubed, instead of reducing linearly (i.e. a small reduction in radius means a large reduction in gravity!).

If you wanna get technical about it, I think there's a problem with a smaller planet having more trouble holding onto its atmosphere, which is basically what happened to Mars, but if you go with making the planet smaller-yet-denser and therefore keeping the gravity the same, that wouldn't be a problem.

Also, having magic around to handwave things can cure a lot of potential physics-related issues! The gravity could be magic-based, for example, or the atmosphere held in by divine fiat, etc ...

Siipis said:

I love this idea. I think it would make a wonderful myth even if it wouldn't necessarily be actually true (the inhabitants of the world wouldn't know that). Would you mind if I added this as a potential myth to my story?

Click to expand...

Yeah go ahead!! Happy to help.

For me, this all comes down to the old "Adam's Navel" idea. Namely, did Adam, who was not born of a woman's womb, have a belly button (a body feature formed at the site of umbilical attachment in the womb)? Theologians used to argue about things like this. Some still do.

A common answer was that yes, he did have a belly button, because God had made the world (including humans) to appear as if they had antiquity. This argument has often been used to explain the formation of geological features that we now know required countless millions of years to form. The world has the appearance of antiquity, because God (or the gods) made it that way.

This doesn't work for scientists, of course, because it's a non-testable, non falsifiable hypothesis (a world created a few thousands of years ago with the appearance of antiquity is essentially the same scientifically as the notion that the world was created 30 seconds ago with everything that seems older, including our own memories, created by God). But it should work just fine for a created fantasy world.

Another option is to include little "clues" in your world building that hint at your world's created nature, implying that the gods maybe got a bit sloppy, or were even leaving little hints for humans. It might be fun to consider what some of these might be. WTF? Fjords in an equatorial continent?

But consider that your characters probably won't be thinking about or questioning the nature of creation on a very scientific level. The arguments that exist in a classical-civilization type of world (whether it's created or evolved) would likely be between different divinely inspired explanations, not between one or more creationist explanation and more scientific ones. Though there were some atheists in ancient Greece, I believe.

Roxxsmom said:

For me, this all comes down to the old "Adam's Navel" idea. Namely, did Adam, who was not born of a woman's womb, have a belly button (a body feature formed at the site of umbilical attachment in the womb)? Theologians used to argue about things like this. Some still do.

A common answer was that yes, he did have a belly button, because God had made the world (including humans) to appear as if they had antiquity. This argument has often been used to explain the formation of geological features that we now know required countless millions of years to form. The world has the appearance of antiquity, because God (or the gods) made it that way.

Click to expand...

Or maybe god has a womb.

RDArmstrong said:

Time is the biggest factor. If the Earth was stopped from spinning then a day could last an eternity.

Click to expand...

Actually, the day would be what we now call one year.

It is so cool that you are thinking about geology as a process rather than as static features! I hope you can integrate that into your writing!

If you want to keep the scientific validity of your world intact, it seems that there are only a couple of options: 1) A created world that is only a few thousand years old but made to look much older with stories of change and events recorded in the underlying rock or 2) A world that really is only a few thousand years old which will then not contain the evidence of long stories (fossils, certain rock types, features such as unconformities in the rock etc).

As several folks have pointed out, (1) was actually proposed back in the 1800's on Earth as an effort to reconcile increasing scientific evidence for great age with a religious view that the Earth should be young. Your story might address the purpose that the gods had in making the world look old, and why they would write into it particular stories of past events that didn't actually occur.

(2) could be an interesting examination of an early planet, undifferentiated (no magnetic fields), rock types dominated by hydrothermal and chemical processes rather than long-term biological and sedimentary processes, etc. In the early days of a planet, before the Al26 has all decayed away, the high heat flow, combined with more common meteorite impacts, might make for a very dynamic, angry-god, kind of story. You could even have some hydrothermally deposited limestone, and metamorphose it to marble--wouldn't be like Earth limestone of course, but similar in composition!

What a fun topic and conversation you started!