This is not another attack on the creation stories found in Genesis, nor is it a condemnation of the evolutionary theories proposed by science. Proponents on both sides can be stubborn in their desire to be right. “It says so in the Bible, so it must be true.” “There is scientific evidence that this is what happened.” As with so many arguments, the truth is frequently in a combination of the two sides. This is a proposal to reconcile the two views.
For me, this investigation began following a trip to northern Kentucky and visits to The Creation Museum and The Ark Encounter. I have friends who are intelligent, rational, and Godly people who believe with all their hearts that the universe is 6,000 years old. I tried to approach these two museums with an open mind, hoping that I would see what my friends saw. I did not.
Fortunately for me and other like-minded people, our salvation is not based on a belief in the Bible as a literal representation of what’s happened in the physical realm. There’s no requirement that we believe in a literal interpretation of Genesis and the creation story. You can believe with all your heart that, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Gen. 1:1 [1]) and still accept that the universe is much older than 6,000 years. In other words, you can believe in the fundamental truth of the creation story without believing in a very young universe. In most Christian traditions the only requirements for salvation are that you love God and believe that Jesus died for your sins. For that, I am very grateful.
Biblical Inerrancy
Many religious leaders believe in the inerrancy of the Bible in all things, including cosmology, and point to 2 Timothy 3:16-17 to support this doctrine:
All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
The concepts in these two verses speak directly to spiritual principles, not earthly realities, and “inspiration” is not dictation. The Bible’s inerrancy is in the spiritual truths contained within it, not explanations of cosmic events that occurred eons earlier and couldn’t be comprehended by ancient man. We’re talking about people who thought there were four elements, earth, wind, fire, and water, and that the earth was flat. When Moses wrote the Pentateuch he was writing for an audience with less knowledge of natural laws than the typical seven-year-old today.
There are many contradictions in the Bible, attesting to the fact that the Bible is not inerrant. There are a number of statements in Genesis that either contradict other statements, or simply aren’t possible. One that is particularly relevant to our discussion of the creation of the universe is that there are two creation stories in Genesis. Genesis 1:1-25 outlines the first five days of creation. Genesis 2:4 says that God made the universe in one day: “This is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens”. Which is it? It can’t be both.
The Heavens and the Earth
“Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.” (Gen. 1:3-5)
“But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” (2 Peter 3:8)
Given that Jesus said that time is a very different thing for God than it is for us, why the fixation on the universe being created in four days (on days 5 and 6 the animals and man were created)? A “day” is one revolution of a planet on its axis and is characterized by alternating periods of lightness and darkness, day and night, as one side of the planet faces the star it orbits (the sun). The sun and moon weren’t created until the “fourth day”.
The big bang theory is very much in keeping with the fundamental truths in Genesis 1:1-19, but so much more awesome. Our all-powerful God creates a singularity containing all the matter of His new universe, He establishes the laws of physics, celestial mechanics, gravity, the speed of light and a billion other details, then puts His plan in motion with the largest supernova the universe will ever see, and then watches as His plan plays out over billions of years. WOW! What a way to say “I AM.” The creation story of Genesis is bland by comparison, and God is anything but bland.
If the universe is only 6,000 years old, how is it that we see light from galaxies that are 13.4 billion light years away, meaning that it took 13.4 billion years for the light from those galaxies to reach the Earth? God certainly has the ability to have put those photons in motion towards us at the time of creation, but what about stars that exploded ten billion years ago, supernovas we’ve seen with the Hubble space telescope? If the universe is only 6,000 years old, then that star never exploded, and God is tricking us. God is not a deceiver.
Closer to home, cosmologists say our solar system was forming 5 billion years ago and the earth was formed 500 million years later. Meteorites have been found and dated to as far back as 4.6 billion years ago. The meteorites are dated using what’s called the rubidium-strontium decay system, not the much-maligned Carbon-14 dating system. Is God deceiving us, again?
Geologists tell us that about one billion years ago the first super-continent, named Rodinia, was formed. This began a cycle of super-continent formation and breakup that continues today.
600 million years ago (mya) another super-continent formed called Pannotia.
280 mya the continents had combined into a single land mass called Pangaea (“all the Earth” in Greek) and was surrounded by a global ocean called Panthalassa.
Pangaea began breaking up 200 mya, eventually forming the continents we have today.
30 mya the continents we have now were recognizable.
Today, Africa is moving towards Europe, Australia is moving towards southeast Asia, North and South America are moving towards Eurasia.
In 250 million years another super continent will be formed.
Pangaea and Panthalassa sound a lot like Genesis 1:9, “Then God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear”; and it was so.”
Geologists also tell us that mountain ranges are caused by tectonic plates colliding (“colliding” seems an odd term for something that takes millions of years to happen). One plate goes under the other. The upper plate is driven upwards out of the ocean. They believe the Himalayas were formed this way 50 million years ago when the Indian plate collided with the Asian plate, and the process is continuing today with Mount Everest growing one centimeter each year due to this plate movement. It would take Everest 885,000 years to reach its current height, and it would be much, much taller if it weren’t kept in check by gravity and erosion. Paleobiologists say that by the end of the Jurassic era, 95 million years before the Himalayas, the oceans were teeming with marine life of all kinds. Given all of this, it would be perplexing if we didn’t find fossils of fish skeletons in mountains all over the world. It would truly take an awesome God to create this amazing planet and all its creatures, past and present.
Plants and Animals
The first life on earth appeared about 3.7 billion years ago and were anaerobic microbes that could live in earth’s oxygen free atmosphere.
2.3 billion years ago a photosynthetic microbe called a cyanobacterium appeared and began producing oxygen.
900 mya the first multi-cellular animals appeared.
For reasons unknown to science, (a nudge from the hand of God?) the variety of life on earth rapidly expanded in what is called the “Cambrian explosion”. This was 540 mya and all life was aquatic and small.
After the Cambrian explosion the diversification of life continued, with the first four legged animals (tetrapods) showing up about 400 mya.
These were followed by amphibians, insects, and reptiles.
200 mya, dinosaurs were the dominant life-form, and the first mammals and birds arrived.
65 mya an asteroid hit earth in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula causing a mass extinction event that wiped out 75% of life on earth, including the dinosaurs. The crater it left behind is over 110 miles wide.
2 mya mammals had continued their development, becoming the dominant form of life. Colder regions saw woolly mammoths, moose and reindeer, warmer regions had elephant, bison, mastodons, hippopotami, deer, and horses.
So far there’s no fundamental discrepancy between the Biblical creation story and evolution. The big bang theory has much more detail. Of course, the first five days of creation in Genesis 1 barely fills a single page and we can hardly expect God to have inspired Moses to write hundreds of pages explaining a physical world that has no real meaning when compared to the eternity that awaits us.
Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind: cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth, each according to its kind”; and it was so. (25) And God made the beast of the earth according to its kind, cattle according to its kind, and everything that creeps on the earth according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. (Gen.1:24-25)
Next … Genesis: Adam, Eve, & Evolution
Christopher Rouse
Christopher@TheRouseHouse.net
[1] All Bible quotations are from the New King James Version
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