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Without Light, there is darkness. Darkness is not made, it is just there. However, before the creation there was nothing. Does that mean that darkness was also not there?

Let us look at Genesis 1:5:

1 In the beginning God created the sky and the earth.
2 The earth was empty and had no form. Darkness covered the ocean, and God's Spirit was moving over the water.
3 Then God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.
4 God saw that the light was good, so he divided the light from the darkness.
5 God named the light "day" and the darkness "night." Evening passed, and morning came. This was the first day.

There is no mention in the Bible that suggests that God created the darkness. When exactly was Darkness created? Is Darkness a thing, or is it the same as nothingness?

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  • I would say it's same as nothingness, a void of light. The specific lack of the phrase 'God created darkness' lends itself to this, imo. A comment since I have no basis for it other than opinion.
    – Derek Downey
    Aug 31, 2011 at 17:31
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    If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
    – a_hardin
    Aug 31, 2011 at 18:01
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    darkness is the absense of light. i'm waiting for science to find the OPPOSITE of light. :-D
    – DForck42
    Aug 31, 2011 at 18:39
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    I have to disagree. Isaiah 45:7 states God created darkness as well.
    – user1754
    Jun 14, 2012 at 1:40
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    This question has collected some pretty poor answers that attempt to argue from a logical, physical, or otherwise non-Christian manner. The answers also fail to state the traditions or doctrines that support their arguments. Many include statements of a scientific nature that are not supported by citations. The subject matter however, seems to be limited to popular knowledge. In short, these are all clearly answers from non-experts offering their opinions and none of them is an acceptable answer for this site.
    – Andrew
    Jul 5, 2014 at 17:19

6 Answers 6

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Darkness is a physical reality of the physical universe. It should be noted that darkness is really the absence of light. We have light bulbs that light a room, but there is no such thing as a dark bulb that brings dark into the room. Darkness occurs in the absence of light.

That being said, the physical universe was created by God. The physical universe is made up of time, space, and matter. Science now shows (with the theory of relativity) that the universe had a beginning. There was a "time" when time, space, and matter did not exist. The creator of time, space, and matter must be an entity outside of time, space, and matter. God is Spirit and thus exists apart from the physical universe.

Consequently, God is the "Beginner", who created the physical universe, including the physical reality of darkness.

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  • "The physical reality" being the fact that there was some absences in certain places. Quite simply, like you stated, darkness CANNOT be created.
    – James Mertz
    Aug 31, 2011 at 18:35
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    Point could be argued that a black hole or other "dark matter" is essentially a dark-bulb. In the presence of light, it can create darkness...
    – Marc Gravell
    Mar 30, 2012 at 19:08
  • The universe is not 'made up of time, space and matter'. You can't handle them like the ingredients of a cake, since matter can't exist without space and time. If you insist in doing so, you are missing energy. But whether the universe is made at all is disputed even in Christianity. More so, your picture of somebody, creating something is completly taken from the physical world. That there must be a creator, or that a spirit exists beyond time and space is pure speculation. That a creating entity has to exist outside is not foundet at all.
    – user unknown
    Feb 13, 2013 at 23:58
  • All you address is physical darkness. Is that the only connotation? This answer is woefully incomplete to garner so many votes.
    – Andrew
    Jul 5, 2014 at 17:11
  • @userunknown E^2=p^2c^2+M^2c^4, ergo M^2= (E^2-p^2c^2)/c^4, ergo an increase in mass necessarily contains an increase in Energy. The rest of your comment seems to me to be incoherent.
    – Please stop being evil
    Apr 12, 2015 at 21:48
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I have a few issues on this topic, I'll illustrate my opinion as follows.

I'm disputing the statements made here:

"Darkness is not made, it is just there."

I'm not here to debate theology, but to argue against the premise that darkness was never made, but was 'just there'. Saying this alone is borderline heretical against the principle belief of both Judaism and Christianity, not to mention Islam.

GOD created the world 'ex nihilo.' Everything that GOD created was made entirely 'out of nothing' by the decree and Word of GOD...the Qalam.

Implying that darkness was 'just there', is saying--in terms of platonic premise--that darkness co-existed eternally with GOD, or before GOD--if anyone wants to take this further. This is directly heretical!

The Bible clearly states numerous times that everything came from GOD.

And another premise that I want to address against:

"There is no mention in the Bible that suggests that God created the darkness."

How can someone say that there is no mention of the Bible suggesting that darkness was created? Clearly in Isaiah 45:7 says: אני יהוה עשה כל־אלה...יוצר אור ובורא חשך "Forming light and creating darkness..I am the LORD [that] does all these.

If anyone believes that darkness CANNOT be created is stating that GOD has limited powers and doesn't possess absolute knowledge, nor the ability to create certain things...again that is purely a platonic view. And such views are considered extremely heretical.

Throughout the Bible, is states that GOD created the [seven] heavens and the earth, and all that is in between....darkness co-exists in the realms of heaven, especially the lowest heaven (i.e. physical universe). I can expound ever so deeply on this topic, but I don't have the time.

But if anyone wants scientific proof: Dark matter, dark energy, vacuum.

My advice is to NOT read bible verses on picking certain verses or tailor the verses to fit your own desire, but read it page-by-page...spend a year reading it, then read it again fully the next year...and do it all over again the year after...then repeat. Biggest problem in Christianity today is that no one really read the Bible fully. I've found many of my Christian brothers and sisters proclaiming that they read it [all], but don't know what is written in it. It is like a mule carrying a load of books, but don't know what is contained therein. They have the sources in front of them but don't understand anything.

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    Good answer, but a vacuum relates more to matter than to light - perhaps a black hole would be a better example ther
    – Marc Gravell
    Mar 30, 2012 at 19:09
  • +1 for Isaiah 45:7. I think you could have left some of that other stuff out or supported it with verses.
    – styfle
    Apr 22, 2012 at 0:41
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Take a look at this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzimtzum

The short version is this... before the creation there was not nothing, there was God. God is pure infinite glory. The primary act of creation, Gen 1:1, God creates the heavens, that is Space, which is, in essence, a retraction of his infinite glory from a particular finite place. The Big Bang and current expansion of the Universe, in other words, is looking at that retraction from the "inside".

Science tells us the initial universe was not the transparent "darkness" that we know today but rather a superhot opaque soup of energy that had to expand enough to cool to the point where matter could exist and photons could travel freely through space.

I might even say that there is no true darkness... even the vacuum of space has energy, you just have to be looking at the right wavelength :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_background_radiation

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The short answer is 'definitely', since that is what Genesis is saying. But I think what you want to know is whether darkness has a positive existence, as light is a photon, lack of the photon is described as 'darkness', but it has no associated particle, and thus no positive existence.

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One can assume that in the creation of earth that darkness followed it. One could also say that the absent of nothing is darkness if that make sense

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God created the Earth, but the Earth exists in the universe. The universe and thus all its laws and behavior were also made by God. Darkness is the absence of light, but Darkness is not the same as nothingness. But even nothingness can be questioned, as as we think of 'nothingness' in our universe, would not it be different than before the universe ever existed?

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