There has been some fascinating conversation about this subject in a Facebook group I am part of in the last week. One contributor to that has been Zachary Arden, and I asked him about his interest in this subject and why it concerns him.
IP: Zachary, where are you from, and what are you doing at the moment that gives you an interest in this subject?
ZA: I was born and educated in New Zealand, including undergraduate degrees in philosophy and biology and my PhD studying experimental evolution (the study of evolution in micro-organisms in ‘real time’ in the lab) was awarded in 2017. Since then my research has been on evolution over the longer term, trying to understand various details around how new genes evolve.
I’m currently a postdoctoral researcher at a leading genomics research institute, where I’m also involved in the team leading a Christian group on campus. My wife Anke is also a postdoctoral researcher in astronomy and we’re both involved in giving talks on science and Christian faith in schools, CUs, and churches. You can find out all about this on my website here.
IP: What was your previous reading of the creation accounts in Genesis? What did this make you think about questions of evolution, geology, and the age of the universe? What shaped your thinking then?
ZA: As a young teenager I was taught a literal 6 x 24 hour account of creation and young Earth creationism in my small church youth group but views in the church varied and the age of the Earth was not generally seen as a major issue. Later in my teen years I shifted towards old Earth creationism by reading some apologetics literature. I was not well thought through on this complex issue! I didn’t study biology after age 14 at high school though I was taking advanced courses in physics and chemistry, partly I think because of fear of a perceived anti-Christian bias due to evolutionary biology.
IP: It sounds as though you have gone through quite a significant shift in your position on this question. What were the main things that led you to this change? And how do you now view your previous position?
ZA: I shifted my view through a process involving a lot of reading, started by interest as a teen and amplified by two very anti-Christian senior professors teaching my first year biology courses at university. This led to a mini crisis of faith and pushed me back into sympathy for a young Earth position, but the process was ultimately good for me and led to me taking the step of baptism at the start of my second year. At this point I was probably an old Earth advocate again, though skeptical of evolution. Over the next few years my views evolved (no pun intended!) as I saw more options than expected left open by the text of the early chapters of Genesis as well as the evidence for common ancestry of organisms and the elegance of evolutionary explanations.
I view the position of my teenage self as largely a product of a specific modern American cultural moment rather than historical orthodoxy or evangelical essentials (with young Earth advocacy really only a major force since the publication of “the Genesis Flood” in 1961 and strongly influenced by the priorities of Seventh Day Adventism). I also see it as rather a distraction from key issues such as the truth of the good news that Jesus Christ is the resurrected Lord, and the real importance of the doctrine of creation. I’m convinced that fear of conflict on this issue too often limits doctrinal teaching on creation and its effective apologetic use in our churches.
I was privileged to work in the group of Prof Siegfried Scherer of the Technical University of Munich for my first postdoc (2016-2021). Siegfried is a very senior microbiologist and was previously probably the most prominent scientific creationist in Europe (head of the German young Earth creationist organisation “Wort und Wissen”) but since the early 2000s shifted away from young Earth views and accepted common ancestry of most or all organisms. I know multiple other research scientists in biology, including others who used to hold leadership positions in creationist organisations, who’ve shifted away from young Earth and/or anti-evolution views as they’ve engaged with the scientific evidence and with other interpretations of Scripture.
IP: That is really interesting to hear of many people shifting their own position as you have. To what extent are the issues here about how we read the Bible, and to what extent how we read the world?
ZA: How we read the Bible is probably the key issue, but I think interpreting the world created by the personal Word and interpreting the inspired written word are not entirely separate endeavours. While only the written word speaks clearly of salvation, both “books” speak truly of God (such as Psalm 19, Acts 14:17) and I think we have good reason to trust the book of nature to speak truly beyond this too.
The dichotomy that young earth proponents typically offer of a ‘conservative’ versus a ‘liberal’ reading is not accurate. Non-literal readings of Genesis 1 have a long history, preceding the New Testament, so can be termed ‘conservative’ on that measure. There is also a strong case that they better reflect authorial intent rather than modern concerns, so are more ‘conservative’ by that yardstick too. I have found a range of interpretations helpful in highlighting different aspects of the text, but particularly the analogical days view as defended by C. John Collins (for example in Reading Genesis Well).
IP: I am not sure many people are aware of that history of interpretation, and that there is such a long tradition of reading Genesis as ‘non literal’ in that sense. But what about the science end of the discussion?
ZA: Well, it is near to impossible to find a young Earth creationist with advanced training in relevant areas of science who is not effectively a presuppositionalist in their approach to the evidence (whatever label they may adopt). That is, they attempt to interpret any empirical evidence in line with a pre-determined literal reading. Young Earth proponents often highlight the credentials but not the underlying methodology which trumps whatever science might indicate.
How important the scientific evidence is seen to be may depend on the person. A lot of people simply don’t care about the science, which I find unfortunate—it often reflects a kind of Gnosticism where the only things that really matter are spiritual rather than physical. I take the record of creation found in created matter seriously as a Christian because we’re told that the laws of nature are God’s ordinances for the cosmos, consistent because God’s character is consistent (see Jer. 33:20-21)—and this makes science possible is a wonderful gift.
IP: It is often suggested that contemporary debates in this area parallel debates in previous eras—that there is a struggle around questions of authority, and in particular the authority of the Bible. Do you think the debates parallel previous discussions—or are we starting from a different point of view?
ZA: I’m not sure about previous debates but I am interested in some key historical moments, particularly the interplay of science and Christian faith in the decades and centuries prior to Darwin. I’m often impressed with how carefully people were thinking about the issues then, including wrestling with the growing evidence of ‘deep time’, from Leonardo da Vinci (late 1400s) onwards. It’s often presented by both young Earth proponents and popular-level atheist writers (who agree on many points) as if Darwin was the hinge point for our views about the age of the universe, which is a complete misrepresentation.
I suspect the current era is particularly ahistorical and uninterested in being informed about the debates of the past and the ways our ancestors in faith settled them. As a first year university student I briefly had the impression that Christians had never addressed the questions I was coming across—in fact, many of the really fundamental questions have been carefully addressed since the first centuries of the Church, although new findings give new angles to explore.
There is a large section of the Church that has come to disrespect outside expertise (whether in hermeneutics or in science). This strikes me as more anarchist than conservative. I’m a big fan of the reformation principle that “the boy that drives the plough” should have access to the text of Scripture, but it doesn’t mean that the first “plain reading” conducted from within one’s own assumptions will be the best one. A radical individualism in interpretation is no more devout than an inflexible adherence to traditional interpretation.
IP: John Stott said many years ago: ‘Not many Christians today find it necessary to defend the concept of a literal six-day creation, for the text does not demand it, and scientific discovery appears to contradict it.’ Why do you think that this issue is coming to the fore again?
ZA: I don’t think young Earth creationism is seeing a massive resurgence (much more common is a vague skepticism about evolution—though young Earth advocates love to conflate the two) and don’t think it deserves a lot of air time, although it is important to respond to it where it crops up, as insisting on it can do a lot of damage.
Insofar as it is gaining some traction in some quarters I think it’s due to other social factors like the decline of trust in institutions, everyday people’s distrust of the “elite”, growing reactionary conservatism in some church circles as the world becomes more obviously hostile to some aspects of Christian ethics. Reminding people that evangelicals have thought through these issues before (including in the years before Darwin) may be helpful.
IP: What would you say to those who claim ‘If you believe in evolution, then you don’t believe in the authority of the Bible’?
ZA: I’d want to explore both the meaning of evolution and biblical authority.
My short answer would be that when Scripture says that “God also made the stars” (Genesis 1:16) it doesn’t undermine biblical authority to believe the claims of astrophysics, which involves considering what the stars are telling us about their history. I think that what is true here for astrophysics is true also for biology.
My long answer would require breaking the question into parts. First, what is the text of Genesis intending to teach? If authority is in regards to a teaching function, we must take authorial intent into account and I find it very hard to suppose that the author was as interested in scientific details as the “who” and the “why” of creation.
Secondly, are evolution and an old universe being conflated? I think the text of Scripture at least quite clearly leaves room for an ancient Earth (though not explicitly teaching it)—for example, the seventh day of Genesis 1 is I believe taught to be a continuing day in John 5:17.
Thirdly, what exactly is problematic about evolution? Does the person making the claim reject all natural processes as consistent with divine action? At multiple points in scripture God uses “natural” processes to achieve his ends.
Finally, is this actually a claim about human origins? This is the trickiest point of apparent conflict, but there are a wide range of potential models for harmonising the science with an Adam who was located in Earth history. Of course, many evangelical biblical scholars disavow the need for a literal Adam, thus removing any perceived conflict, but this isn’t the route I currently take.
IP: For someone new to faith wrestling with this question, what would you suggest they think about, and what should they read?
ZA: The claim that God is the creator of this universe is a remarkable one and well worth investigating. Indeed, I think it is both a logical and chronological foundation of the Christian faith. The claim of creation can’t, however, be conflated with the rejection of “natural” processes. The “laws of nature” simply are the laws of God for the universe, and it is good to investigate their details and outworkings. Evolutionary biology is the fascinating science that studies these processes in the history of life on Earth, and there’s good reason to give thanks to God for them. As such I’d suggest framing the question as a matter of exploring the details of how God has made the universe, but not “whether” he has.
Some helpful short books to read:
John Lennox: Seven Days that Divide the World. An introduction to how this famous Christian apologist reads Genesis while accepting an old Earth. I don’t agree with everything here, but I think it’s a good popular level short introduction.
Rebecca McLaughlin: Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions for the World’s Largest Religion. This addresses key questions for those considering Christian faith in the modern world, including science and faith. Highly unusual for an apologetics book, it has been reviewed by multiple leading scientists – and it shows in its precision. The author’s brother is a prominent immunologist, which perhaps helps!
Alister McGrath: anything short he’s written on science and faith will be helpful, and there are many to pick from! Inventing the Universe is a good place to start.
Roger Trigg: Beyond Matter: Why Science Needs Metaphysics. This is an excellent short book on the philosophy of science from a leading British Christian philosopher.
In summary, in these comments I’ve sought to undermine the dichotomy of creation versus evolution as I find it to be unhelpful and inaccurate. There is a complex spectrum of theological and scientific options on the table and only the advocates of the extremes of fundamentalism and atheism benefit from the dichotomy.
IP: thanks so much for telling us about your journey, and offering such a helpful exploration of the issues.
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In Genesis 1&2 God speaks ten times. This seems to me to be worth thinking about if only to give the seven days approach a little rest.
Surely the Old Earth view is the mainstream conservative one, and Young Earth thinking a radical departure from it, supported only by a minority? That said, over the last couple of decades I’ve noticed Young Earth creationism gain traction amongst some evangelicals. Yet if you ask them a few obvious questions, they tend to go quiet and walk away. The obvious one, to me, is that a literal reading of Genesis puts creation of the Earth before that of Sun and Moon. This would surely make the Moon and Sun planets orbiting around the Earth. Therefore it’s reasonable to ask Young Earth supporters if they’ll stop referring to the earth as a planet, regard the Sun as a planet and cease referring to the ‘solar system’. A good article, which recognises the weaknesses in extremist views at either end of the spectrum.
To play devil’s advocate, I think the Hebrew word used re creating the sun and moon is different from the word used in previous days, and may have a different meaning, more in the sense of already created but giving them a function. Some use this to view the 4th day rather than the sun and moon being created, it reflects the clouds clearing and being able to then view the already created sun and moon. Im not persuaded and Im sure Hebrew scholars could comment.
Is evolution and an ‘old earth’ compatible with Genesis 1 and 2? The answer is obviously yes, but few Christians – especially the most educated ones – have the honesty to admit this. Instead, they tie themselves up in knots trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. Driving a wedge between the literal and the non-literal, where the non-literal – sometimes characterised as ‘spiritual’ – contradicts the literal, is merely a rhetorical strategy to disguise the fact that Genesis, objectively considered, is false and untrue.
Genesis says God ‘created’ the heaven and the earth. The western Church says, ‘created’ means simply Nature forming the Earth and all living forms by itself, by the operation of its intrinsic laws. Natural processes are the opposite of creation, and ‘God’ is the opposite of ‘Nature’.
Genesis says God created the heaven and the earth ‘in the beginning’. Thus the diversification of species from the original created kinds attested in the fossil record took place after the Creation. The western Church reinterprets creation to mean the operation of natural processes over billions of years.
Genesis says that the Earth was created first, and the Sun three days later. This contradicts the atheistic narrative. One of the two narratives is false.
Genesis says that trees and plants were created before the Sun. As we know, vegetation in our world require sunlight. It therefore follows that there was another source of light (that created on the first day) and/or only one day passed before the Sun was formed. The atheistic narrative denies both possibilities.
Genesis describes a series of creative acts, separated by the passing of one evening and one morning. The western Church says this is misleading. ‘Creation’ – i.e. Evolution – is continuous, and continuing because geological and biological and indeed astronomical change never stops. ‘Creation’ is still going on today.
Genesis says that man was also created in the beginning, and made in the physical likeness of God (namely, Jesus Christ, the first son of God). The western Church, along with modern atheism, says that man evolved from the apes, having the physical likeness of apes, and that this happened not at the beginning of time but very near the end.
Genesis says that the earth – the landmass sensu Gen 1:10 – was destroyed (Gen 6:13, 9:11). It therefore cannot be dated; the landmass that exists today does not and cannot go further back than the Cataclysm that destroyed the original landmass. The western Church denies that Genesis records a global cataclysm and ‘all things are continuing as from the beginning of creation’ (II Pet 3:4).
Genesis records a genealogy of mankind that, abridged though it undoubtedly is, goes back to Adam, the ‘son of God’. There is no genealogy from apes, reptiles, amphibians, fish and microbes. The western Church says that the genealogy is essentially fictional. There were no human beings in the beginning.
Jesus Christ, the one through whom all things were created according to the New Testament (John 1, Col 1) – so he was in a position to know – explicitly stated that man was created, and that that creation was ‘in the beginning’, not at the very end of history. The western Church says that, in this respect, he was a fallible human being with no special knowledge. What he said was incorrect and his testimony false.
False too, therefore, is the testimony of all Scripture in maintaining that God created the heaven and the earth throughout, from Genesis to Revelation. As Richard Bauckham points out, the Judaic concept of God after the Babylonian Exile was distinctive for two absolutely fundamental beliefs: 1) that he saved Israel by works of great power in the Exodus, and 2) that God was the Creator of all things. The Church has completely abandoned this second basic truth.
As judged by Scripture, the Church has become ‘futile in its thinking’ (Rom 1:21). It is an apostate, heretical Church, and those who side with the atheistic narrative are doing the work of ‘the deceiver of the whole world’ (Rev 12:9).
But of course the account of that Deceiver’s first deception, in the beginning, is also considered fallacious. Satan had to wait 4.6 billion years before there was anyone to deceive, and presumably he evolved into existence just as man evolved into existence.
Since the truth is the truth, be it physical or spiritual, the western Church has chosen the worst of both worlds, for the atheistic narrative is true neither scientifically (‘literally’), nor spiritually and biblically. Anyone who wishes to understand how the geological and palaeontological record supports the biblical record is directed to http://www.earthhistory.org.uk.
‘And I saw another angel flying overhead, with eternal good news to deliver on those who were seated on the earth, and on every nation and tribe and language and people, saying with a loud voice, “Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgement has come, and worship him who made the heaven and the earth, and sea and springs of water.” ‘
There are more things in heaven and earth, Steven, than are dreamt of in your exegesis.
‘Is evolution and an ‘old earth’ compatible with Genesis 1 and 2? The answer is obviously yes, but few Christians – especially the most educated ones – have the honesty to admit this.’
Did you mean to say ‘no’?
Although I think evolution is true, Im not sure I’d use the word ‘obviously’.
Thank you. I did.
It is very easy to discuss these issues philosophically without actually coming to grips with the key issues. I find that eight questions open out the issues involved: Did God create time; Why is science beautiful; Do miracles occur; How old is the earth; Was Noah’s flood global; Who did Adam’s children marry; Do you believe that some people lived for centuries as Genesis states; What would you see if you had snapshots of your father, and his father, and so on, backwards in time?
Time – we still dont really understand ‘time’. Per Einstein time is related to space, so in my understanding time as we understand/experience it does not exist if space does not exist. But is this universe the only ‘space’?
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Im not sure it is science that is beautiful, but rather the creation. But how does one define ‘beauty’?
Miracles – yes in my view they do occur, and point to God. Not sure how to define a ‘miracle’. Is it God ignoring the normal ‘rules’ of the creation to make a point?
The earth seems to be very, very old.
Noah’s flood – not global, possibly very local, possibly didnt happen.
Lives – highly unlikely some people lived to centuries old. We know from other books in the Bible that numbers arent always to be understood literally, like the 144,000 of Revelation.
My ancestors would go back to the first homo sapiens. Some dude.
Numbers not being literal creates a problem. I can see that 144,000 can be symbolic of completion or perfection etc.. But can 63 be symbolic of 1, or 6 of 28?
So do you believe that just a few thousand years ago, some people were living to near 1000 years old?
No. How does that follow?
There is a beauty in some mathematical structures that is abolutely objective, although some education in the subject is necessary to perceive it. The mathematics of the real world – i.e. the mathematics of physics – is exceptionally beautiful. Why should that be?
Doctor Who, in his David Tennant incarnation, said: ‘Time is a wobbly thing’. I absolutely agree with him!
Thanks for this, this Venn diagram was recently produced which is helpful:
https://scienceandculture.com/2025/08/heres-the-venn-diagram-from-my-conversation-with-denis-noble/
For some background on “Third way” see this RS paper:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsfs.2017.0015
“But in the past decade, without much notice by general audiences, a more wide-ranging debate has arisen from different areas of biology as well as from history and philosophy of science, about whether and in which ways evolutionary theory is affected, challenged or changed by the advances in biology and other fields. As usual in such cases, more conservative perspectives and more progressive ones are in conflict with each other, with differences ranging from minor to intense. A rising number of publications argue for a major revision or even a replacement of the standard theory of evolution [2–14], indicating that this cannot be dismissed as a minority view but rather is a widespread feeling among scientists and philosophers alike.”
And there is this letter from Darwin to his son which has a rather revealing post script:
https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-9105.xml
“I have lately read Morley’s Life of Voltaire & he insists strongly that direct attacks on Christianity (even when written with the wonderful force & vigour of Voltaire) produce little permanent effect: real good seems only to follow from slow & silent side attacks.”
For an example of recent research from a YEC perspective see here:
https://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1470&context=icc_proceedings
If we believe, as all Christians do, that the observable (and scientifically measurable) processes of creation and the words of scripture both bear witness to God’s existence and his creative intention, we cannot sensibly put one in the dock against the other – not least in terms of our very limited grasp of how our human time relates to God’s existence beyond it. And if we have the slightest concern that people should come to believe in God’s saving grace through Jesus, we are doing them no favours by immediately demanding that they do that very thing when the perfectly reasonable questions arise about how we come to be here in the first place.
Even to the simplest mind it must be clear that the Genesis account conveys the (unexplained) existence of God and the creative work he performed in simple story form rather than the kind of precise scientific detail which would be totally incomprehensible to people at the time it was written. Nevertheless it’s perfectly reasonable to ponder why the story is presented within an exact 7 day period if everything we know about the world around us suggests something very different.
Such pondering, particularly when we know so much more (but certainly not all!) about our universe and our place in it, must surely bring us to realise that our God is immense and unfathomable in every sense beyond what we mere mortal beings could ever comprehend. I don’t think he’s ever kept us purposely in the dark, but I do think he knows that there are things which we will never understand this side of eternity. Sometimes it’s just best to keep things simple. He’s revealed enough for now. For the rest, we’ll just have to wait. Given the trouble we have simply confronting the mundane problems of human living (and the mess we constantly make of it), I think he’s quite right about that!
In particular there really is nothing to be gained by setting our own chosen limits around what God was allowed to in terms of the timing and processes of creation. From God’s point of view is that not simply ridiculous? Job and his pals soon found out about how limited their human understanding was. Nothing has changed.
It is absolutely true that Genesis is not a scientific account. But if it is directly inspired by an omnipotent God (as I believe), it should not be inconsistent with the subsequent findings of science. In discussing the relation between the two, three points should be made:
1. The exegesis has to be correct, and understood in terms of the contrasting creation accounts of ancient Israel’s pagan neighbours.
2. The science has to be correct.
3. Miracles will always be contrary to science. You will never explain Peter walking on water and sinking as his faith failed (Matthew 14) by a better theory of gravity.
I have no problem with brothers in Christ who say “I believe the Bible and the science has to be wrong”. The trouble comes when they try to dispute the science, make elementary mistakes, then when they realise they are losing the scientific debate they revert to “I believe the Bible and the science has to be wrong”. They should have had the modesty not to stray into science in the first place.
The age of the earth should be discussed before evolution, because evolution is a complex matter and because everybody agrees that if the world is 6000 years old then evolution has to be false. But I’d add that “after their own kind” merely means that a male lion makes with a female lion, not a female giraffe, and that the offspring are also obviously lions. In other words, the verse is about breeding true – as any farmer understands. It is not about what their offspring 1000 generations down the line look like.
Re (1), the book “(Mis)understanding Genesis” by Ben Stanhope looks at the creation tales of Israel’s pagan neighbours. I do not agree with everything in it (eg, dating of the Torah), but it provides very valuable context that so-called fundamentalists are unaware of and need to know.
In case anybody wondered, I accept the truth of Genesis and do not believe it is written as myth. The genealogies in particular dispose of that claim: a mythical figure cannot beget a flesh-and-blood individual, which would have to happen at some point.
Let me add to Zachary’s list of recommended book:
* (Mis)understanding Genesis by Ben Stanhope (see above)
* Debating Darwin by Graeme Finlay (another New Zealand evangelical and geneticist!), Stephen Lloyd, Stephen Pattermore and David Swift – Christians of varying beliefs who respond in debate to each other
* Life Ascending by Nick Lane, a secular prof of evolutionary biology who regularly shows that the evolutionary account fills in gaps that fundamentalists claim *cannot* be bridged.
I think the tricky questions are around Genesis 3. How does macro evolution fit with the concept of the fall?
Are we in a world that is getting more complex and better (the evolutionary paradigm) or are we in a broken world/cosmos that is groaning and struggling and declining as it awaits new birth?
The Romans analogy of Jesus & Adam implies that Adam was the first human. Genesis 1 implies humans were created (out of nothing) rather than made or formed.
For me it is how Genesis 3 fits into the evolutionary model that I struggle with way more than Genesis 1 & 2.
Any thoughts?
Thanks for the questions. Could you please give both names as per the Comments policy?
It seems to me, that he truths that must be upheld are:
– God created the universe out of nothing (ex nihilo).
– Creation is ordered, good, and purposeful.
– Humanity is created in the image and likeness of God.
– There was a real primeval fall, through which sin and death entered human history.
– The soul is directly created by God; it cannot be explained by material evolution.
– The unity of the human race must be maintained (no polygenism).
Hi Jack
Why is it necessary to believe God created the universe ex nihilo? A number of Old Testament scholars, such as Temper Longman, dont accept the Hebrew is clear enough to conclude that.
re the fall, this is the question I have a problem with given I accept evolution. Science tells us that death, whether plant, animal or human (or at least human ancestors), was all around, essentially once life began. Even if you limit ‘death’ to humans, is it really believable that even if the time between our ancestors ‘becoming human’ and having the image of God and the subsequent ‘fall’ is short, that there was no death in that time, and completely ignore all the previous death?
re the soul, do we get that idea from Genesis? It seems to come from God breathing life into his newly created humans, but didnt he also breathe life into other creatures?
Monogenism seems to be the view held by evolutionists.
‘Through him all things were made.’
Aristotle posited that the world was eternal. For some reason (I don’t know why), his partial disciple Thomas Aquinas believed it could not be demonstrated from reason that the world had a beginning. Thomas believed this could only be known by special revelation.
But 20th century apologetics, relying on the kalam argument and the big bang or singularity theory, holds that a beginning in time of the world can be demonstrated by science.
If matter was eternal it would possess one of the attributes of deity. Hence we say ‘creatio ex nihilo’.
Hi James
Just to clarify my point was that the Hebrew text doesnt necessarily mean ‘created out of nothing’ but could have already existed in some form. But that doesnt mean the universe is eternal, as only God appears to be eternal.
There just seems to be an assumption that that is what the text means, when it’s unclear.
Peter
I should have made it clear that John 1.3 is literally ‘through him [sc. the Word] all things existed’ (egeneto).
That includes matter, energy and the laws of physics. I would include mathematics as well.
Heb. bara’ needn’t strictly mean ‘ex nihilo’ but I think it is clearly implied. The Bible doesn’t think of an eternally existing world – or of matter, as far as I can see.
Heb 11:3
Scripture has to be read as a whole – with revelation developing throughout its book.
Genesis 1:1–2 is debated among Hebrew scholars with some arguing the Hebrew doesn’t demand ex nihilo. But the wider biblical witness supports it: 2 Maccabees 7:28 (“God made [the universe] out of things that did not exist”), John 1:3 (“All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made”), Hebrews 11:3 (“By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.”) The doctrine of ex nihilo develops from Scripture as a whole, not Genesis alone.
The Church has never taught that biological death was absent before the Fall. The key is human death. The tradition reads Genesis 2–3 to mean that man and woman, infused with a soul, were created in a state of original justice and would not have suffered death as we do now. The Fall introduced human mortality as we experience it: death as rupture, alienation, and separation from God. Adam and Eve, the first humans, were elevated by God to a special state of grace in which death would not dominate them. After the Fall, they lost this preternatural gift, so death as we know it became part of human experience. So, death was in the world biologically, but theologically, death as a curse applies to humans in their relation to God.
Genesis 2:7 says God formed man from dust and “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” Animals are also described as having the “breath of life” (Genesis 1:30, 2:19). The distinction is not in the language of “breath,” but in the nature of the soul. The human soul is spiritual and rational, capable of knowing and loving God, so qualitatively different from animal life, which also breathes but lacks a rational, immortal soul. The idea is hinted at in Genesis but developed through theology, especially as revelation progresses (Wisdom 15:11, Ecclesiastes 12:7, and more fully in the New Testament John 11:25–26, John 14:2–3, Matthew 10:28, Luke 23:43, Philippians 1:23, 2 Corinthians 5:6–8).
Actually evolutionary science points to polygenism, not monogenism. Scholars propose models like the “genealogical Adam and Eve,” in which God chooses one pair within a larger population. Through genealogical descent, they become ancestors of all, preserving both theology and science.
Polygenism has a long and complex history. The contemporary genetic question that puzzles me is where does Neanderthal man fit into the picture? Is it true that Africans don’t have Nesnderthsl genes but Europeans and Asians do? I have only recently learned of this question.
Yes, I think that’s accurate. Neanderthal genes are mostly found in populations whose ancestors left Africa. Sub-Saharan Africans, except for minor back-migration, lack Neanderthal DNA because Neanderthals lived in Europe/Asia, not Africa. However, this does not contradict the idea of a historical Adam and Eve — the “first couple” could have been chosen by God within the broader African population.
But please note, Jack, that papal statements have generally attacked polygenism and affirmed monogenism as upholding Catholic teaching about Adam and Eve and the descent of all humans from them. Mind how you go!
If homo sapiens from Africa interbred with Neanderthals, what are Neanderthals other than just another kind of human being? What do we mean by “species”?
Among secular anthropologists I sense there is a certain nervousness about the relative lack of Neanderthal DNA in Africans because it seems to undermine the monogenetic claim that all humans constitute a single species with a single origin. Science is never free from politics.
James, Catholic teaching insists on monogenism because the doctrine of original sin depends on all humans sharing descent from the one historical Adam (and Eve). Humani Generis warned against polygenism if it meant there were multiple, unrelated “first parents.” At the same time, the Church has not closed the door on how science and theology might be harmonised; it simply insists that human unity in Adam must be upheld.
From the scientific side, Neanderthals don’t actually disprove this unity. They were so close to us genetically that interbreeding occurred, and many Europeans and Asians carry a small percentage of Neanderthal DNA. That doesn’t mean they were a wholly separate “species” in the modern sense — “species” is a flexible category, and Neanderthals were part of the wider human family.
If Adam and Eve were chosen by God from within the African population, their descendants could have interbred with Neanderthals. The human spiritual lineage would still be traced through Adam, not through Neanderthals as such.
So while anthropologists debate the technicalities, both science and faith affirm the same essential truth: all humans share a common origin and belong to one family. Genetics shows our shared roots in Africa, and theology shows our deeper unity in the first bearers of God’s image. Neanderthal interbreeding complicates the picture, but it doesn’t undermine either human unity or Catholic teaching.
Jack:
So what are you (or Catholics) saying?
Were Neanderthals human beings – as fully as homo sapiens? Did Neanderthals possess rationality and speech?
Were they made in the image of God?
Should we not assume this if they interbred with homines sapientes?
My own view is that Genesis 1 & 2 are theological in nature and should not be viewed as scientific textbooks nor historical narrative. It also appears to be a polemic against other creation stories held by other ANE peoples, telling us about the real God and humanity. Just as the book of Job may very well be a literary story rather than reflecting real events in the life of a man called Job, so Genesis.
Except that the Letter of Job seems to treat Job as an historical person. As Jesus seems to treat Noah as a real person in history. What are your views on the historicity of Noah?
Im not sure what you mean by the book of Job treating Job as an historical person. I dont see how you can conclude that from the text.
Im not sure about Noah and the flood. Noah and that story don’t have to be literally true for Jesus to refer to it. If I quoted from Sherlock Holmes does that mean he must have been a real person?
I can only say Im sure there was no global flood, but a very local flood is quite possible which may have appeared to be like the end of the world to those living in the area. Or it’s a story to illustrate a point.
Peter: that was my typing error. I meant to say the Letter of JAMES (great name, btw).
James 5.11 appeals to the example of Job. If Job had never existed, how could he serve as an example? As a ‘timeless parable’? It doesn’t read that way to me.
He may have been real or not. I dont know either way. Happy to live with that tension, not knowing…
Peter, the issue is not what you believe but what the biblical writers were teaching.
Joshua Berman – an Orthodox Jewish scholar – in his book “Ani Maamin” addresses the challenge to Orthodox belief (in the 13 Principles of Faith) of modern approaches to the Pentatuch. In it he makes the important point that in the Hebrew of the Bible, and Mishnah, there are no words equivalent to ‘history’, ‘fact’, ‘fiction’ or ‘author’. One should avoid the fallacy of attempting to force a text into modern catagories of historiography. They need to be understood within the context in which they were written.
I would also comment that we have no problem with referring to, for instance, “Hamlet’s existential angst”. Does that imply that Hamlet actually existed, and his speech is an accurate record of what he said?
Beware the corresponding fallacy of looking for precise individual words that map to precise individual modern words. The issue isn’t words but meaning and implication. ‘Trinity’ isn’t found in the NT. But it would be a mistake to conclude ‘therefore the idea isn’t there.’ Euclid taught Pythagoras’ Theorem but not in terms that we use today.
Everyone knows that Hamlet is a literary creation and everybody studying the play suspends disbelief. We would be surprised to read a Danish history that discussed him as a real historical person.
It’s obvious from Ezekiel 14:14 that God considered Job to be a historical person, like Noah and Daniel. Interestingly, many modern ‘scholars’ also contest their existence (as attested and determined by their biblical contexts).
nothing is obvious.
This a is a very interesting interview, and Zach gives a number of helpful links as well for further reading. Is he from Seventh Day Adventist background? The essays on his website make for thought-provoking reading on whether evolution has purposefulness and cooperation built into it, or is quite without purpose or direction.
It would be interesting to hear his take on Intelligent Design and the mathematically based criticisms of macro-evolution we find in Stephen Meyer (‘Signature in the Cell), Michael Behe and Bill Dembski.
We need to be cautious about ID because of the danger of reducing God to a scientific hypothesis competing with natural causes, instead of the transcendent Creator who gives being itself. Creation and evolution can be seen as complementary, not opposed. Catholic theologians such as John Haught and Stephen Barr argue that evolution is real and science can detect mechanisms. Theology, however, asks why there is a world at all, and why it has rational order. God is not just a tinkerer inserting complexity, but the ground of existence and intelligibility.
ID as a scientific research program argues that some biological features (e.g. the bacterial flagellum, DNA “information”) cannot be explained adequately by Darwinian mechanisms, and that science itself can detect the fingerprints of an “intelligent cause.” So ID tries to insert design as a scientific explanation, competing with naturalistic ones; God as a “scientific hypothesis” as an alternative to natural causes. God is the Creator of being itself – the reason there is a universe at all, with order and intelligibility. Evolution describes the mechanism of biological development; creation names the deeper metaphysical truth that all things exist because of God. Evolution helps explain how life unfolds. Creation explains why there is a world with life, order, and intelligibility in the first place.
Quite – beware the lure of “God of the gaps” because the gaps keep shrinking…
There is more to it than that, Jack. In addition to Behe’s arguments for ‘irreducible complexity’ and his claim that adaptation can come from *switching off genes (e.g. polar bears), Douglas Axe (formerly a postdoc in genetics at Cambridge) looks for evidence of information in cells, as does Stephen Meyer, who brings up the combinatorial problem, viz. that there isn’t enough time for chance mutations to come up with useful change (and most mutations are actually harmful). Meyer also lays stress on the Cambrian Explosion, which has bothered gradualist evolutionists and led to saltationist theories. Then there is the extreme complexity problem of the Origin of Life, on which James Tour has a lot to say. The more we learn about living structures, the more complex they appear (contrary to what Darwin thought).
If creation is like a pebble thrown into a pond then what starts in the centre is the most dynamic, energetic. It decays as it spreads out. Could God have created the heavens and the earth instantly ? What Genesis describes is from the outermost, ripple of simplicity(light) inwards towards God himself. God’s voice, what God says, are the important points in Genesis 1 & 2. Once we are past verse 1 time starts , the countdown to the centre of the ripples from God’s voice.
As we have God’s spirit we find ourselves experiencing ‘time’ , that knowledge we are riding the ripples of creation, not part of it.
AND… I haven’t even had a drink yet!
Mine’s a rum and coke. Ta
“I also see it as rather a distraction from key issues such as the truth of the good news that Jesus Christ is the resurrected Lord, and the real importance of the doctrine of creation.”
A thousand times this!
I’ve never quite been able to shake the suspicion that those who cling most fervently to literalist views such as 7-day creation do so in part to avoid the hard work of thinking through and applying Christian ethics. Much easier to prove your faith by holding some eyebrow-raising counter-cultural view that has no real impact on your life.
Is the point of Genesis 1 to convince you that the world was put together in a week? Or is the point to tell us that our world is a creation of God that He saw as good, and the plan is not to escape it but restore it, and our physical reality is real not a mirage for the spiritual?: Christianity is a reality based religion!
First apologies: as fast as I have tried to compose this, new contributions have kept overtaking me. All I can do is add my two-hap-pence worth…
I would add another recommendation: Spencer, N, Magisteria: The Entangled Histories of Science & Religion. 2023; not that I think it will answer ‘The Question’, but it will help to disentangle the multitude of questions that are there to be answered (though less often answered than we might wish).
I happen to be a convinced ‘Creationist’: I believe, though I cannot prove, that God (Yahweh) created everything. It follows that ‘everything’ had a beginning (Big Bang???), contradicting, of course, most classical scientific thinking until the mid 20th Cent.! I also believe that all “God breathed writing” is “useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness”. However, I think several considerations remain: do our Bibles (with or without Apocrypha?; using LXX or only MT?…) offer information on everything, e.g.: black holes, dark matter, galactic expansion or contraction, ‘nurture or nature?’, DNA modification, …? When God says: “Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?” (Job 38.2), does this validate or invalidate some previous chapters?
We all start with our personal histories and their resultant preconceptions. We either have to stop wasting time defending our predetermined positions or enter a constructive debate, trusting the Holy Spirit to “guide into all the truth” (Jn 16.13 & → 2 Tim. 2.25?), which, by the way, must mean that we don’t yet have it all!
One might just as constructively start with: Is ‘young earth creationism’ compatible with Genesis 1 & 2? I would suggest the following as starter questions:
What was the ‘deep’ over which the Spirit of God was moving, and when and for how long? (ignoring NIV’s mistranslation);
Where did God keep his godfather clock until the sun appeared?;
When God said “let the land produce”, how did the land do that?;
On which day did Adam (& Eve?) die? (→ Gen 2.17, ignoring NIV’s mistranslation);
Why does the creation sequence change between chapters 1 & 2? (unless, of course, some point other than chronology is being stressed.);
Of whom was Cain afraid? (Gen. 4.14-15); and
Who were the ‘sons of God’ and the fair ‘daughters of men’? (Gen. 6.2, & → Luke 3.38?).
I do not claim to have all the answers, but I do think very ‘Old Earth’ Creation, combined with the latest theories of evolution, are a much better fit with the evidence than the alternatives reviewed above.
As always, much more could be said, but see John 21.25.
Talking to persuade a one about Christ I might use the verse about things visible made out of what is not seen as a way to bring the conversation along, if the unbeliever values the science of dark matter. It matters not if dark matter theory is ultimately debunked. The point is to use what the person believes in and build on it. Like directing a stream. There is no point arguing a point for its own sake. Jesus spoke about Adam to his listeners because they could be taken along in his argument. They believed in Adam.
I believe Adam was the first hominid to be upgraded with the breath of God. During Adam’s field testing he was asked to name the animals. He must have been introduced to many female hominids but came away from the encounters with a shrug of disappointment. His spirit only leapt when he met Woman. It must have been like Elizabeth and Mary’s meeting. Doesn’t your heart leap when you unexpectedly meet another Christian? Or, is your interest only piqued when you find the other person is either or a creationist/evolutionist?
I believe Adam was the first hominid to be upgraded with the breath of God. During Adam’s field testing he was asked to name the animals. He must have been introduced to many female hominids but came away from the encounters with a shrug of disappointment. His spirit only leapt when he met Woman
This is my preferred resolution of some of the riddles, too. But clearly their children bred with those physiologically identical hominids, and should that be seen as bestiality?
I recommend Arthur C. Custance on this subject.
As Adam and Eve only started a family after their expulsion from the Garden perhaps bestiality was the only method available. What God intended for them if they had continued in innocence we will never know. There is a clue, the “heroes of old” may have been these hybrid Adamite/Neanderthals (human). Custance thought this. The spread of humans into Europe may have only been possible as a hybrid. The constant dilution with hominids produced mighty men but the cost was shorter and shorter lives. By the time of Abram the process was complete, humanity had bottomed out.
Er, but the first command in Gen 1.28 is ‘Be fruitful and multiply…’??
Perhaps Adam n Eve left the Garden, and left behind 99 others who still remain in Paradise to this day; living, loving, breeding etc.
I take the ‘heroes of old’ in Genesis 6:4 to be ghastly hybrids of fallen angels (pagan gods) and humans. That is exactly what you see in Greek and other pagan mythology.
Anthony,
Tubal Cain could be Vulcan. I think the ancient Greeks took a lot of ideas from the Jewish diaspora without crediting them. Ancient Greek technology borrowed from the Babylonians who stole it from Hezekiah and Solomon. If only Solomon hadn’t squandered his legacy!
Steve,
What ideas do you think the Greeks took from the Jews via Babylon, and what is your evidence that those ideas already existed in pre-exilic Israel and reached Greece from Babylon?
Anthony
Anthony,
What ideas do you think the Greeks took from the Jews via Babylon, and what is your evidence that those ideas already existed in pre-exilic Israel and reached Greece from Babylon?
Solomon left a legacy so that…
2 Chronicles 26:15
In Jerusalem he (Hezekiah) made machines, invented by skillful men,…
Jeremiah 24:1
24 After Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had taken into exile from Jerusalem… the craftsmen, and the metal workers, and had brought them to Babylon…
Then Greece invaded Babylon.
Then the Romans plundered Greece, see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
It seems to me a lot of technology gets invented in obscurity then gets used by more powerful people.
See Ecclesiastes 9:15
But there was found in it a poor, wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city. Yet no one remembered that poor man.
It may be that ancient Israel influenced the surrounding cultures in more ways than they get credit for.
Steve,
Metalworking was invented by TubalCain (Genesis 4:22) long before the Babylonians, and spread widely across the region. Homer describes metal weapons among the ancient Greeks long before Babylon rose.
You really shouldn’t have terminated short the quote from 2 Chronicles 26:15. This is about making siege engines, ingenious lever systems applied to make weapons of war, but very coarse compared to the stunning Antikythera mechanism.
Anthony,
Thanks. I could listen to you for hours.
In the end I have to talk one to one with non Christians and try to persuade them, not of “six impossible things before breakfast”, but of the Resurrection of the dead. Any deviation on their pet subject has to be brought back to this. Therefore I try to be neutral on politics, science etc. Jesus may have used Adam in conversation because he knew it would be understood in a Jewish context. Personally I believe Adam, Job and say Daniel (the Jewish prophet, not the philosopher) were real people. Generally I think if somebody in the Bible has a name they are real, if the Bible says “a certain person” or “a man” then not.
Back to the earth origin…
What if the early earth was a water giant, lost its water so that the earth could expand, like removing the lid from a pressure cooker; from the size of Mars to its present diameter. A settling of the internal structure could explain the wild fluctuation in sea level in Noah’s time.
Thank you! At least as much water as the seas hold is stored in magnesium silicate (ringwoodite) some 300 miles underground. Perhaps this is implicated in Noah’s flood.
Anthony,
ringwoodite
Yes, I read about that. Interesting.
One could imagine an early earth slowly removing liquid water from the surface by chemically bonding it. Methane hydrate is another. The transition process may not have been smooth. Noah’s flood may have been the last hiccup before the earth settled down for a quiet spell of a few thousand years.
James – you are right but I dont know if the writers were referring to real, historical individuals, Job being an example. But does it actually matter with regard to their main teaching? I think not.
It is hard to see how a literary creation can serve as an example to us who inhabit the real world. Would you encourage people to follow the example of Clark Kent?
Clark? No. Buzz Lightyear? Yes
Yes, to infinity and beyond.
Good Samaritan maybe….
This discussion start with a presumption:
God or not God- which God?
And moves to the philosophy of science, and the philosophy of religion, even to scientism and theology. And the why question.
To me, where company may begin to part is based on John 1. And the incarnation, and resurrection and Ascension.
How big is God, that any reality of Genesis 1+2 could even be contemplated, or even that we have their existence, within the doctrine of scripture.
The heirachy of thought is:
1 Doctrine of God
2 Doctrine of humanity (of which science is a part).
We seek to invert the order at our peril.
Around 1980, Derek Kidner gave a ‘Bible Reading’ on Genesis 1 to the Cambridge Christian Union. It was a time when YE Creationism was an issue for some. There was one brief mention of evolution:
“The text says ‘let the earth bring forth’. Is there not room enough in that for evolution?”
There are three modes of creation in Genesis 1:
– God simply ‘makes’
– God speaks and ‘it was’
– God expresses the intention (the verb form is a ‘jussive’, a ‘volative’ form) that a third-person (in the grammatical sense) does something
More than one of these can be used in a given context. They are not exclusive. The text is not concerned with the details.
I gained something else from that talk, perhaps more important. I saw in Kidner a man with a deep love for God, and a deep love for the Bible which speaks of God, and a love for sharing with others what he had found about God from the Bible. Something to emulate.
Derek Kidner’s commentaries are a gold mine which repays careful reading, because he packs a great deal into each page. I have been reading through his Psalms commentary to accompany my daily reading and each day I learn something new, generally about the innerbiblical connections that Kidner discerns.
“ the elegance of evolutionary explanations”
I always question the provenance of this common statement because explanation is not evidence. And, as a study of evolutionary ideas shows, explanations have been endlessly changed. Explanations, and all assertions about origins, cannot be falsified which is a basic tenet of scientific knowledge. We can’t prove the past in biology, we can only make inferences. That is unlike astronomy where evidence of the past can still be measured, and in some cases, observed.
I have found the work of Reasons to Believe very helpful and their Old Earth standpoint. In particular, they have a way of reading Genesis 1 as from observations on the Earth rather than as observing the whole of creation. It reconciles the problems of light, plant life and the Sun. Of course that is explanation too so we can never be totally assertive.
This Question is not only a profoundly Theological one about our understanding of the Genesis texts but also must take account of the more recent scientific implications of Molecular Systems Biology and the impact of Information Theory on our understanding of Genetics.
I would not attempt to summarise here the implications of these two streams, but would heartily commend two outstanding books. (With apologies to those readers already familiar with them.)
The Lost World of Adam and Eve by John H. Walton IVP 2015 (with an excursus by Tom Wright on ‘Adam and Second Adam’) Walton lays special emphasis on more recent understandings of the Hebrew and other ANE culture and vocabularies relevant to our reading of Genesis 1 and 2.
Significant topics are:
Genesis is about functional origins rather than material origins, and similarly about functional order roles and functions.
Adam and Eve’s existence as real people and the whole Cosmos as Sacred Space, within which non-order, Order and Disorder, sin and death are consequences.
Tom Wright’s exploration is Paul’s Use of Adam in Jesus the Second Adam, Keystone of God’s plan to resolve Disorder to Perfect Order. Humans as a special Creation of God.
My second commendation is the profoundly important John C. Lennox, Cosmic Chemistry -do God and Science mix? Lion 2021 which is a scientific and apologetic tour de force; it’s twin sections 3 and 4 on Biological Evolution, Natural Selection are spellbinding and yet explain great mysteries in an approachable way. He moves on from ‘The Modern Synthesis’ to the even more astounding implications of The Mathematics of Evolution as Systems Biology unveils the central role of biological Information theory in Part 5 as central to the miracle of life.
The Lost World of Adam and Eve by John H. Walton IVP 2015 ISBN 978-0-8308-2461-8
Cosmic Chemistry -do God and Science mix? John C. Lennox, Lion 2021 ISBN 978-0-7459-8140-6
From: Graham Loughlin [[email protected]]
From the books of Lennox I’ve read he largely rejects evolution. But he seems to get most of his information from Christian anti evolutionists. He’s good on some things but not on why evolution does not explain the development of life. Because it does.
Thanks Graham for your comments, but (as far as I’m aware) Professor John Lennox has zero qualifications in Chemistry, so I think it is hyperbole to describe his Cosmic Chemistry as a “tour de force”.
However your French idiom reminded me of James (‘Jim’) Tour, Professor of (inter alia) Synthetic Chemistry at Rice University, Houston TX.
Tour has authoritatively (and quite aggressively!) argued online and on YouTube against abiogenesis (a living cell arising from inanimate chemicals by purely naturalistic processes ie. life without a Lifegiver). He makes a very convincing case that Darwin’s “warm pond plus lightning” would never result in life whatever the timescale.
If this essential first step in the evolution story fails, the whole process collapses like a house of cards. There’s no life for nature to select: no DNA to mutate!
Whatever evolutionists claim – theistic or atheistic – naturalism is dead in the water. Millions may still believe and espouse it, but truth in science is not established by consensus. Christians have a better explanation for life – from Jesus Christ its Creator.
How true, and we must remember that life, in the proper sense, is not merely physical. Plants are not living, animals are, and all animals have ‘the breath of life’ (Gen 1:30, 6:17, which comes directly from God (Gen 2:7, Job 27:3, 34:14, Isa 42:5). For this reason too, therefore, no Christian should be attempting to explain life on the basis that atoms assemble themselves into living forms.
Even on its own terms, naturalism runs into difficulties:
https://scitechdaily.com/the-math-says-life-shouldnt-exist-new-study-challenges-origins-theories/
But you have to be born again and informed by the Holy Spirit to recognise that the atheistic narrative is false (I Cor 2:14). As the discussion on this page has illustrated, most Christians don’t want Genesis to be true.
There is much that could be said, but I will only look at items which really stuck out at me.
Quote: “…young Earth advocacy really only a major force since the publication of “the Genesis Flood” in 1961 and strongly influenced by the priorities of Seventh Day Adventism…”
Really? A ‘young’ earth has been taught throughout the history of the Church, as can be seen from the works of Origen, Basil the Great, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, James Ussher, Matthew Henry and John Wesley, for example (see my website https://godcreated.info/test-of-faith#creation-100-year-theory for quotes from every one of them showing their belief that the world is less than 10,000 years old); and it is still accepted by many Christians, including many PhD scientists, today.
Quote: “While only the written word speaks clearly of salvation, both “books” speak truly of God (such as Psalm 19, Acts 14:17) and I think we have good reason to trust the book of nature to speak truly beyond this too.”
The ‘book of nature’ can give absolutely no information whatsoever about the means by which Jesus was raised from the dead, an event contrary to all the observable laws of science – as are all the other miracles in the Bible. Therefore, it cannot give any explanation for anything God does outside of those laws. What is unacceptable is to claim that the ‘book of nature’ proves six days are not long enough for the formation of the universe, therefore they must be long periods of time. This presupposes that the only option God had was to use the observable natural laws; in which case He couldn’t have done any of the other miracles described in the Bible either, including the resurrection of Jesus. If He couldn’t create outside of the natural laws, then He couldn’t do anything else outside of them. This is the serious issue with theistic evolution, because taken to its logical conclusion it destroys the way of salvation (Romans 4:27): no resurrection, no salvation! Since there is no scripture in existence that even hints God created via ‘natural laws’, there is no justification for assuming He did it that way.
Quote: “Well, it is near to impossible to find a young Earth creationist with advanced training in relevant areas of science who is not effectively a presuppositionalist in their approach to the evidence (whatever label they may adopt). That is, they attempt to interpret any empirical evidence in line with a pre-determined literal reading. Young Earth proponents often highlight the credentials but not the underlying methodology which trumps whatever science might indicate.”
Exactly the same thing is true of literally all atheistic scientists, whose faith in atheism “trumps whatever science might indicate,” and all evolution-believing scientists are equally biased toward their faith. There are many examples, but here is one from my website quoting an evolutionist regarding geological dating methods:
“If a C14 date supports our theories, we put it in the main text. If it does not entirely contradict them, we put it in a foot-note. And if it is completely ‘out of date’, we just drop it.”
I have many other similar quotes from evolutionists here: https://godcreated.info/the-religious-faith-of-evolution#evolutionists-admit-it
Quote: “First, what is the text of Genesis intending to teach? If authority is in regards to a teaching function, we must take authorial intent into account and I find it very hard to suppose that the author was as interested in scientific details as the “who” and the “why” of creation.”
So was Paul wrong when he said all scripture is God breathed (2 Timothy 3:16), which therefore means God is the author of Genesis and He told Moses exactly what He intends us to believe? The God who cannot lie (Hebrews 6:18) must therefore have been telling us the truth. Psalm 119:105 tells us God’s word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path, but it can only be that if it says what it means and means what it says. God knows the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10) and therefore knew that millions of people from the time Moses wrote it to the present day would trust what was written and believe the days of Genesis 1 were 24-hour days. So He would have worded it differently if He had done it differently – otherwise He is deliberately lying to us.
Quote: “Secondly, are evolution and an old universe being conflated? I think the text of Scripture at least quite clearly leaves room for an ancient Earth (though not explicitly teaching it)—for example, the seventh day of Genesis 1 is I believe taught to be a continuing day in John 5:17.”
Extraordinary! How on earth can, “But Jesus answered them, “My Father has been working until now, and I have been working”” mean that the day in which God rested continues until the present time (or at least until Jesus said those words)? It specifically says that God has continued to work until the present time, not that He has been resting! This is precisely the verse that proves God’s day of rest did not continue for a long period of time!
Furthermore, Exodus 20:9-11 and 31:15-17, which tell us the people of Israel were to work for the same period of time every week that God did in creation, leave absolutely no room for an old earth whatsoever. The only way anyone can make those days mean long periods of time is by using the tactic, “when the Bible says “x” it doesn’t mean “x” it means “y”.” Jesus Himself made exactly the same point in very strong terms (see vs. 7-9 below) when speaking to the theologians and intellectuals of His day:
Then the scribes and Pharisees who were from Jerusalem came to Jesus, saying, 2 “Why do Your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread.” 3 He answered and said to them, “Why do you also transgress the commandment of God because of your tradition? 4 For God commanded, saying, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘He who curses father or mother, let him be put to death.’ 5 But you say, ‘Whoever says to his father or mother, “Whatever profit you might have received from me is a gift to God”— 6 then he need not honor his father or mother.’ Thus you have made the commandment of God of no effect by your tradition. 7 Hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy about you, saying:8 ‘These people draw near to Me with their mouth, and honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me. 9 And in vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’”
Matthew 15:1-9
So: the Bible says “x” (honour your parents), but you say it means “y” (not if it’s a gift to God)! Whether the issue is honouring your parents (Matthew 15:1-9), theistic evolution (Exodus 20:9-11; 31:15-17), replacement theology (Romans 11:1), transgender issues (Romans 1:26-27), or whatever it is that contradicts the Bible’s clear teaching, altering its meaning is nothing less than compromise with man-made theories, or as Jesus put it, “…teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.”
Quote: “Thirdly, what exactly is problematic about evolution? Does the person making the claim reject all natural processes as consistent with divine action? At multiple points in scripture God uses “natural” processes to achieve his ends.”
Problems with evolution:
• It is contrary to scientific observation, as can be seen by the many observations that contradict it.
• It means God was incapable of creating the universe and everything in it outside of the natural processes we can observe today, when over and over again throughout scripture He is seen working outside of those processes. Why would He act differently during creation from the way He worked throughout the rest of scripture?
• It means sickness, suffering and death continued for millions/billions of years before the appearance of humans, when the Bible teaches these are the result of human sin (Romans 5:12).
• It means God was lying when He told Adam and Eve that if they ate the forbidden fruit they would die (Genesis 2:7; 3:3), because, having evolved from a very long line of creatures all of which died, they too would have died whether they’d eaten or not.
• It means God created all living things via sickness, suffering and death (without which evolution cannot function), when He considers these things an enemy (death specifically: 1 Corinthians 15:26) that will be destroyed for the whole of future eternity (Revelation 21:4): if He doesn’t want them in the future, He didn’t want them in the past either! God does not change (Malachi 3:6), and He couldn’t possibly describe all things as “Very good” (Genesis 1:31) when they included things He does not want.
• It means Jesus was wrong when he said God made male and female humans from the beginning of creation (Mark 10:6), when they didn’t appear until over 13 billion years after the beginning.
• It makes God a liar, who’s description of the order of events of the six days in Genesis 1 conflicts significantly with the requirements of evolution. See below:
The Bible says:
…………….The Big Bang/evolution says:
Earth created in the beginning
…………….Earth created c10 billion years after the beginning
Earth began as formless water
…………….Earth began as molten blob
Light for half a week before the sun
…………….Light only after the sun appeared
Earth before the sun and stars
…………….Earth after the sun and stars
Vegetation before the sun and stars
…………….Vegetation after the sun and stars
Birds before land creatures
…………….Birds evolved from land creatures
Adam created from dust
…………….Humans evolved from primitive ape-like creatures
Eve created from Adam’s side
…………….Humans evolved from primitive ape-like creatures
The claim “God uses “natural” processes to achieve his ends” is self-contradictory. If natural processes are doing what they would normally do, then God is not using them but simply observing what is taking place in the same way that humans observe them. If God is using them, then He is acting supernaturally outside of the natural processes to ensure they do what He wants, and to make them do what otherwise would not necessarily happen. For example, wind blows around the world every day, but it never cuts a path through a sea with walls of water either side sufficient for a nation plus livestock to travel through it and then stops so that the pursuing army is drowned (Exodus 14:21-29). The Bible is full of examples of God working outside of natural processes to make them act differently to normal in order to serve His purposes. So why would God act differently in the first two chapters of Genesis to the way He operates throughout the rest of the Bible? And why would He deceive us by defining the creation days as each consisting of one evening and one morning (i.e. one period of dark and one period of light) if they actually were millions or billions of evenings and mornings?
Quote: “The claim of creation can’t, however, be conflated with the rejection of “natural” processes. The “laws of nature” simply are the laws of God for the universe, and it is good to investigate their details and outworkings.”
Who is rejecting natural processes? Certainly not me, and not the literally 100’s Ph.D. scientists (past and present: e.g. see https://creation.com/en/pages/creation-scientists) who research into them, and accept the Bible’s description of origins, including a ‘young earth’, as the only one that makes sense and agrees with scientific observation. Of course natural processes are God-created laws for the function of the universe; but that does not mean it is impossible for God to work outside of them. My website page https://www.inthebeginning.org.uk/the-religious-faith-of-evolution gives the 15 main evidences that have been used as evidence for evolution which have now been shown to be false, with a link to 40 evolutionary predictions that fail. It gives statements from key evolutionists who are now admitting the theory does not work (albeit still believing in it – they just think they need to find alternative ways for it to operate). And it gives 15 scientific evidences for a ‘young’ earth.
Les, you said:
‘ Psalm 119:105 tells us God’s word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path, but it can only be that if it says what it means and means what it says.’
I think I know what you are trying to say here, but what you did say seems to contradict completely what you want it to say. Maybe the options of ‘truth’ and ‘lies’ are *not* the only ones when we use language?
Sorry Bruce, I fail to see any contradiction. Could you explain, please?
OK Les. Thanks for your question. Your ‘says what it means and means what it says’ seems to suggest that the ‘meaning’ of a text can be read directly from the form of a text. But is this how we humans use language in communicating?
That would seem to ignore that most of what we humans understand from a ‘text’ (spoken or written) is through inference, not the actual words of a text. It also seems to ignore that how we understand a text owes quite a bit to genre, and also to what the hearer/reader understands (guesses?) at what the speaker/writer was *’doing’ with the text — so the utterance ‘(with God) there is no partiality’ could be a warning or a promise. Which is it in Eph 6:9; is it different in Col 3:25? In particular from your example from Ps 119:105, the text *says ‘lamp’ and ‘light’ but what parts of our understanding of ‘lamps’ and ‘lights’ did the writer *mean? All of them? or only some of them?
Thank you for replying, Bruce. My answer to your first question is, yes: that is exactly how we humans use language, and particularly in important documents; otherwise every time we spoke, or wrote, to each other, we would be misunderstanding what was being said/written. Misunderstandings can happen, of course, but usually through a poor use of language or mishearing, and comparatively rarely (i.e. the percentage of what is misunderstood compared to what is understood is usually very small).
I fail to see the distinction in the Bible references you quote regarding ‘partiality’. It makes absolutely no difference whether the statements are promises or warnings; the point is that God treats everyone exactly the same. Or to put it another way, you reap what you sow.
I also fail to see the point regarding Psalm 119:105. The psalmist is clearly saying that God’s word is like light being shown where our feet are stepping on a dark path. It prevents us going astray off the path. But of course, it can’t do that if it is manipulated into meaning something different from what it very obviously says.
So, for example, when God said Israel have six days to work each week because that was how long He worked when He created everything, both the context and the words themselves make it very clear that the six days of Genesis were six literal days. (Bear in mind this was a part of the ten commandments, so a very important piece of text.) When God said that to Moses, did Moses immediately think to himself, “He means we have six days in which to work every week because when He created everything He worked for over 13 billion years?” Of course not! So we should take what Moses would have thought as the actual meaning: nothing else makes sense. If God had worked for a long period of time, the length of time He worked had absolutely no relevance to the length of time Israel were to work whatsoever and He wouldn’t have mentioned His work period. Since God knows our thoughts, He would have known if Moses had got it wrong, in which case He would have corrected him.
As I said in my original posting, the only way to distort that statement into meaning something different, is to use the tactic, “when the Bible says “x” it doesn’t mean “x” it means “y”.” The only possible reason for doing this with God’s words to Moses is in order to make them say something they clearly do not mean and thus accommodate evolutionary theory, which is a notion totally foreign to the Bible and no hint of it can be found anywhere.
Les, it might be worthwhile to think a bit more about the link between the words of an utterance and the meaning of an utterance. If we consider the meaning of an utterance to be talking about the ‘picture’ that our minds build up of what an utterance is saying then we rely on more than simply those words themselves, that is, on more than the *form* the utterance has.
In the English utterances, ‘The bird went over the hill’, ‘The girl went over the hill’, ‘The road went over the hill’, we could talk about the ‘meanings’ of the individual words all we like, but the ‘picture’ in our minds of what happened in each case is completely different. So, it seems to be the case that we use more than the *form* of words to communicate. This is why it is often not helpful to explain what scripture might be saying from looking at individual Greek or Hebrew words in a lexicon or Strong’s concordance.
I’m not quite sure how ‘you reap what you sow’ (YRWYS) produces quite the same ‘picture’ of what Paul is saying in Ephesians and Colossians. Mainly because YRWYS says nothing about God. But also, we need to ask not only about the *form* of an utterance, but what the writer/speaker is *doing* with an utterance Otherwise we could never understand that someone saying ‘It’s cold in here’ is wanting you to close the windows. Paul’s statement about God’s impartiality? Couldn’t it be a warning to masters to not treat slaves harshly or to slaves that God will not treat you like a harsh master would? So it can be *either* a warning or a promise. So is there any significance in whom Paul is addressing with this utterance in Colossians and Ephesians, that is, looking at the ‘context’?
You say ‘regarding Psalm 119:105. The psalmist is clearly saying that God’s word is like light being shown …’ But that is *not* what the psalmist in the English translation ‘says’ — there is no ‘like’. So does the text mean *exactly* what it says, or not?
You have actually *inferred* (‘guessed’, if you like) the meaning you gave (a quite reasonable one 🙂 ) based on only one of the things about a light/lamp. It could also have been talking about *fragility, *shape, *size, *how they are made and so on. The text itself doesn’t say — the reader needs to infer this. And this is always the case — trickier when we get to words like ‘rock’ and even more so when we come to ‘shepherd’ or ‘son’.
No, Les, language use in communication is a lot more subtle and flexible and creative than I think you have given it credit for. Worth thanking God for. It is *not* a matter of using only the spoken or written clues that we are given in an utterance. If we are going to use arguments from language and language use in ‘defending’ particular readings of scripture then we really need to think about how language actually works.
Sorry, should read ‘or a promise to slaves’ in paragraph 3.
Bruce, since clearly you don’t understand the elementary mechanisms of human language such as simile or metaphor (or pretend you don’t – either way the effect is the same) there is no point in continuing this discussion. I have better things to do with my time. When you stand before God at the end of your earthly life, try telling Him that when He breathed His word to humans it was incomprehensible, and see what kind of response you get!
Over and out.
Indeed Les [Sherlock}
Your consideration of the “whole counsel of God” is very significant.
Questions
How long was the earth without form and void?
10 years 100, 10,00 ……..
How long was Adam on the earth before the Fall?
10, 1000, 10,000,000…. years?
How old was Adam when he became a father?
The Earth and Creation are old and mankind is Young.
Deut 29:29
Hello Alan,
How long was the earth without form and void?
Dry land and vegetation appeared on the third day.
How long was Adam on the earth before the Fall?
I don’t know. I would have thought it unlikely to be more than days, weeks, or months at the most because Satan was unlikely to delay for long before launching his attack with his temptation; but we are not told in scripture.
How old was Adam when he became a father?
130 years old.
Adding up all the genealogies from Adam to Abraham in Genesis 5 and 11 comes to around 2008 years; and the whole of creation is no more than one week older than Adam.
Deut 29:29 “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.
Therefore:
The age of creation and the time it all took for God to produce is not a secret, because God has revealed it to us in His word.
Blessings,
Les
I do apologise. I was rushing to reply last night and didn’t get it right! Of course, it was when Adam’s third son, Seth, was born that he was 130. We are not told how old he was when Cain and Abel were born.
One other point: all the descriptions of how long natural processes would take to produce the universe are totally irrelevant, because God is never restricted to natural processes, and in Exodus 20 and 31 He specifically states that He created the entire universe and everything in it in the same time period the Israelis were to work each week. End of story!
Thanks to Graham Loughlin for at last directing us to a proper context where discussions of the Genesis creation account should start. That is the ancient Near East (ANE) where Genesis originates. There was a shared ancient cultural understanding which was not a modern scientific one.
To extend Graham’s comment based on John Walton’s work, any literal understanding of the ANE was not a modern material one of cosmological development and biological evolution over enormous timescales. The paradigm of the ANE was that of creation as a Cosmic Temple. This is reflected in many of the Genesis details scarcely noticed by us but likely immediately apparent to the ancient Hebrews.
This temple theme continues throughout the Old Testament where God meets with his people in a temple. There was the tabernacle in the wilderness and later the first and second temples in Jerusalem. Now our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit where He is with us as He was with the man and woman in that original garden. And we now await and work towards the final consummation when the New Jerusalem will come down out of Heaven and “the one who is victorious I will make a pillar in the temple of my God. Never again will they leave it.” (Rev 3:12).
When we have a clear grasp of all of this we might start relating the cosmic temple to modern science.
So again, thank you Graham Loughlin.
(PS. Ian, I hope to see you at the BNTS in Manchester on Monday.)
Yes–see you then!
Absolutely. I think this is the correct conceptual methodology to understand Genesis.
Writing as the author of a commentary on the last book of the Bible, John’s Revelation, which is a prophetic summary of what God has done throughout time, and also as someone with a BSc in geology and a PhD in aspects of the climate and ocean chemistry of the Neoproterozoic division of geological time, and as someone who, moreover, has worked on the questions raised here for over 30 years, I would add this:
The biblical historical framework can be summarised as follows:
– Creation
– Antediluvian period
– The Mabbul (not well translated as ‘Flood’, since the word applies uniquely to this event – the NT word is kataclusmos), when the Earth (planet) is entirely inundated and the earth (landmass) destroyed
– A period of indefinite duration when terrestrial animals, including human beings, multiply and spread out to repopulate the earth (Gen 9:19, 10:32). Likewise vegetation, since the earth had been denuded.
– Several/many ages precede the present one (Rom 16:25, I Cor 2:7, 10:11 et passim), with the present age implicitly being that which the Bible from Gen 11 focuses on, the age of cities. To be equated therefore with the recolonisation period covered by Gen 8-10.
The geological historical framework can be summarised as follows:
– First, the Hadean ‘aeon’ 4560 to 4000 Ma [millions of years] ago. However, the period is almost devoid of rocks (there are a few sq km in Canada dating to > 4160 Ma).
– In the absence of rocks going back to the beginning, the Earth as a whole is dated on the assumption that it formed at the same time as asteroids and meteoroids; the oldest meteorites date to ~4357 Ma. Meteorites are dated radiometrically, on the basis that they are leftovers from the formation of the solar system. The mineralogical evidence does not support this, however.
– Enormous impact craters on the Moon show there was a cataclysmic bombardment of the Earth-Moon system ~ 4380 Ma ago. The Moon was reduced to rubble, and necessarily, the whole Earth would also have been destroyed.
– The very oldest rocks following that event were subducted by plate tectonic processes.
– The geological record becomes increasingly continuous from 4000 Ma, which marks the beginning of the Archaean aeon.
– At this juncture the whole planet was under water – the only time in all its history when it seems to have been entirely submerged.
– The Archaean was a period of great tectonic and volcanic instability, the interior being hundreds of degrees hotter than now. All geological processes were consequently much faster than now. The Archaean was followed by the Proterozoic, 2500-550 Ma. The Earth’s geography was nothing like the present one and continually shifting. Otherwise not a lot happened.
– The only fossil evidence of life to speak of from this time are microbes (archaea and bacteria), joined in the Proterozoic by algae. Evidence of bacteria and archaea (complex life forms that are very unlike each other) goes back almost as far as the oldest rocks. The conditions in which they formed were extreme, i.e. hot and close to anoxic. Throughout the Archaean and Proterozoic the oceans were slowly cooling and becoming more oxygenated to greater depths.
– Animal fossils do not appear until ~550 Ma. They are all marine. They appear suddenly, in a ~20 Ma interval known as the ‘Cambrian Explosion’. Virtually all of the ~35 animal phyla appear at this time, and so far as the fossil record is concerned, they have no evolutionary precursors. Thereafter animals diversify within the bounds of their respective phyla, generating the lower taxonomic levels of classes, orders, families and genera. There is no single ‘tree of life’ whereby species diversify from the bottom up. They diversify from the top down. Multitudinous co-existing family trees (‘phylogenies’) put forth branches like the trees in a growing orchard.
– The first terrestrial plants appear in the Silurian 430 Ma ago, though spores appear earlier. Bryophytes, then vascular plants.
– The first trees appear in the Devonian period ~390 Ma, again without evolutionary precursors. Tens of metres tall. The first insects appear, also suddenly, plus myriapods. Both appearances are explosive, i.e. many diverse phyla appear more or less simultaneously. The land is greening up.
– Amphibians appear in the second half of the Devonian, but long-term leave no evolutionary descendants. They are enigmatic from all points of view.
– Reptiles appear at the beginning of the next period, the Carboniferous. They show no evidence of having evolved from marine animals.
– Mammals appear from the late Triassic onwards, ~220 Ma, but like the first amphibians leave no evolutionary descendants. Apparently unrelated modern mammals – the vast majority ‘placentals’ – do not appear until the end of the Jurassic.
– Dinosaurs appear about the same time. As with other groups, their fossil record is one of extraordinary diversification. They become extinct at the end of the Cretaceous, ~ 66 Ma.
– A few dinosaur lineages evolve into birds. However, few modern bird orders can be traced to dinosaur lineages. Most appear explosively at the beginning of the Palaeogene (later than 66 Ma).
– Man appears in the Neogene, the last major time division, from 4.0 Ma ago, in Africa. He begins colonising other continents from ~2 Ma.
Matching the two records.
In sum, there is a huge amount of evolution/diversification, but it is all top down, and when one examines it in detail, all clearly pre-programmed. The fossil record traces the recolonisation of Earth from a small number of original ‘kinds’. The location of the ‘mountains of Ararat’ is unknown but the above evidence suggests somewhere in eastern Africa. Certainly not the Neogene volcanoes of Anatolia.
The Earth-Moon cataclysm ~4380 Ma corresponds to the total destruction of the earth in the days of Noah, when subterranean waters erupted from below and ‘apertures’ opened in the heaven (Gen 7:11) to let in a ‘rain’ of asteroids from above. The whole Earth was subsequently under water, just as it was in the vicinity of Noah. Earth’s earliest geological record is missing (in contrast to the Moon’s) because of that lithosphere-shattering cataclysm. Plate-tectonics swallowed up the pulverised antediluvian landmass.
The sequence of events in Genesis 1 is, in this respect, a complete red herring. Nothing survives from that time survives to be investigated and compared with the six days of creation.
For the first six-sevenths of Earth history (4000-550 Ma), the fossil record consists of no more than microbes and algae. Then animals appear as if out of nowhere – crustaceans, molluscs, sponges, arthropods etc, some of them modern-looking – a mystery that remains unsolved to the present day. The pattern is not one of gradualistic, Darwinian bottom-up, single-tree-of-life evolution.
Because it is impossible to impose a plausible Darwinian narrative on the fossil record, it is more reasonable to infer that real time has been grossly inflated by radioisotope dating, the absolute dates of which are valid only if the rate of radioactive decay has been constant: a very big assumption which the primary geological evidence does not support (e.g. https://www.earthhistory.org.uk/questions-of-age). Time divisions initially billions of years long get shorter and shorter as time slows down. The biblical ages correspond to the geological ages.
If we assume constant rates through time, man appears near the end of history, in stark opposition to the biblical record, and the age of the Earth is incompatible generally with the biblical record. The Bible simply gives a false and misleading picture and cannot be the Word of God, as Jesus himself took it to be. If, however, radioactive decay rates have been exponentially slowing down towards present rates, man’s appearance in actual time is then much earlier relative to the whole span of recorded time.
All biblical kinds underwent a huge amount of anatomical change in the course of adapting to the constantly changing environments of the post-Deluge earth. Man was no exception. For example, the oldest fossils show an increase in brain size relative to body size. Fingers were once more curved, as would have facilitated tree-climbing.
The very oldest fossil that is more than a mere fragment is ‘Kadanuumuu’, from Ethiopia. Although officially classified as an australopithecine, a detailed analysis shows it to be unambiguously a male Homo (see the monograph <i<The Postcranial Anatomy of Australopithecus afarensis: New Insights from KSD-VP-1/1, published in 2016. Likewise, the skeleton of ‘Lucy’ is that of an upright-walking human female, also wrongly classified. To confuse matters, humans and true australopithecines lived in the same area and – atheistic palaeoanthropology being what it is – ‘Lucy’ is commonly depicted with an australopithecine skull from another location. The skull has nothing to do with the postcranial skeleton.
Steven, you write:
The location of the ‘mountains of Ararat’ is unknown but the above evidence suggests somewhere in eastern Africa. Certainly not the Neogene volcanoes of Anatolia.
I agree that it is nothing to do with today’s Mt Ararat, but have you considered the mountains of the ancient kingdom of Urartu, which is a much larger area and would be the same in the original consonant-only Hebrew? Notice also that the mountains all became visible on the same day. It beggars belief that they wer all of similar enough height for this to happen on one day as the Flood receded. I suggest that a mist cleared.
For the first six-sevenths of Earth history (4000-550 Ma), the fossil record consists of no more than microbes and algae. Then animals appear as if out of nowhere – crustaceans, molluscs, sponges, arthropods etc, some of them modern-looking – a mystery that remains unsolved to the present day.
That’s not true. The orthodox explanation is that enough oxygen had by then entered the atmosphere due to photosynthesis for the Krebs cycle to go into reverse (from what is called, anachronistically, the reverse Krebs cycle, to the [forward] Krebs cycle) for respiration to become energetically favourable – the catalysed oxidisation of carbohydrates – and turbocharge all subsequent evolution. This is detailed in Nick Lane’s books ‘Oxygen’ and, more recently, Transformer. I am not at this moment engaging you in whether Lane is correct, just denying that it is a mystery to orthodox science.
What is your scientific evidence that the speed of light, which is of course involved in the culculation of radioactive decay rates, has reduced, please?
Have you considered the mountains of the ancient kingdom of Urartu?
Yes. The following is an excerpt of a book-length I will be posting on the web shortly:
Toponym transfer is a common phenomenon. Another biblical example is the transfer of antediluvian names such as ‘Tigris’ and ‘Euphrates’ to the rivers of modern Mesopotamia.
The statement of mine you quote is true, and as you kindly excuse me from engaging on whether Lane is correct – a crucial question as regards your comment – I will say no more, except to say that while sufficient oxygen in the upper ocean is one precondition for animals to have subsisted in the Cambrian epicontinental environments (water depths up to ~150 m) where they now occur as fossils, increasing levels of marine oxygen in no way explain the origin of those animals. The element oxygen has no creative bio-engineering power.
Looking through the literature more or less at random, I find Zhang & Shu (2021) in their review article ‘Current understanding on the Cambrian Explosion: questions and answers’ stating:
‘The Cambrian Explosion is by far the most dramatic chapter in the annals of animal evolutionary history, which laid foundations for animal evolution since the Phanerozoic. … Over the last six decades or more, our knowledge on the nature of the Cambrian Explosion has been growing in many folds through multidisciplinary investigations …. However, its cause is still poorly understood and thus was listed as one of the Science’s mysteries in many places.’
That is still the position in 2025.
You are dismissing Lane without having genuinely engaged with the thesis he propounds. Perhaps that is because it is dangerous to your scenario. You are free to dismiss it, but you run an intellectual risk.
Toponym transfer is a common phenomenon. Another biblical example is the transfer of antediluvian names such as ‘Tigris’ and ‘Euphrates’ to the rivers of modern Mesopotamia.
I’m sorry but that is eisegesis, and for the same reason again. Here is the fine biblical archaeologist Joel Kramer explaining how the Tigris and Euphrates as we understadnd them might have changed course a little and joined the sea elswhere as se level changes, but together with other biblical references easily provide enough information to identify the other two rivers of Eden. It is important to remember that today’s Near East is incredibly much dryer than it was 2000 years ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwCdZ4CbA-E
Kramer is a properly trained archaeologist AND an evangelical Christian – a rare combination today – and he invariably finds that the Bible and the archaeology agree.
You are jumping to conclusions and aspersions that are unwarranted.
You began by saying ‘I am not at this moment engaging you in whether Lane is correct, just denying that it is a mystery to orthodox science’. You have changed your mind, but I am not gooing to be drawn.
If you think Nick Lane is to believed and that there is no Creator God, that is up to you.
I have not changed my mind and I do not understand why you think I have. I accept that I might unintentionally have confused you, so please explain.
I think Nick Lane is correct and there IS a creator God. Why do you insist it is one or the other?
Regarding the speed of light and radioactive decay rates decreasing, the evidence is outlined in the aforementioned ms. that I will be posting shortly. I have already linked above some geological evidence that decay rates grossly inflate true time. Examples can be multiplied many times over. It is well recognised that nearly all the postulated millions of years filling the geological record must be in the time-gaps between strata, not in the strata themselves. Derek Ager famously said that the history of sedimentation in any one part of the earth is like the life of a soldier: long periods of boredom and short periods of terror. There is no direct physical evidence that the intervals are each tens to hundreds of thousands of years.
Some bed sequences comprise cyclical warm/cool alternations, which, based on the lack of evidence for long stretches of time, I interpret as summer/winter alternations. Where the sequences are thick enough for them to encompass millions of radiometric years, that enables one to calibrate radiometric time to true time. Here is of course not the forum to discuss details in more depth than this.
As for historical measurements of c (last couple of centuries), these are given in ldolphin.org/cdata.txt, Table 2, which I independently analysed myself. The resultant graph is in the ms.
The ms. also discusses evidence drawn from the meteorite record.
Steven,
I read recently that gravity is not uniform across the globe. Could the flood have been caused by the centre of the earth’s mass moving to cause the sea level to rise? How huge would a magma blob have to be to shift the mean sea level?
No. The primeval Earth was very different from the present Earth, and its surface was primarily land. The ocean (no exactly equivalent Heb. word, nearest is tehom, deep) lay underneath the land. Hence the deluge began with the springs of the deep (which had hitherto irrigated the earth) erupting explosively from below, Gen 7:11. Only in the post-deluge world were there oceans or, in some periods, one big ocean.
https://www.earthhistory.org.uk/before-the-cataclysm/before-the-flood
There’s only a 0.25% difference betwen gravity at the top of Everest and at sea level, so differences of the kind you consider won’t be enough to do that. Also magma couldn’t move inside the earth fast enough to explain the rate of fall of the Flood.
Thanks both of you.
João Magueijo has generalised Einstein’s theory of gravitation to encompass a variable speed of light (conventionally denoted by c); this is nontrivial because c is pulled through differential operators with respect to spacetime by Einstein, whose derivation of his field equations depends on c being constant – meaning that you can’t just take his field equations and let c become a variable in them.
But the evidence for Magueijo’s theory from astrophysical observations is not strong. Sedimentation rates involve multiple further uncontrolled variables.
As for Lambert T Dolphin’s list of experiments estimating c, it is salutary to plot not only the estimated values against the date of the experiment but also the error bars. Of course the earlier the experiment, the larger the error bars, because technology improved continuously. When you do that you see that you could by eye equally well fit a falling line, a rising line or a flat line to the data.
Error bars are included in my analysis, and a flat line is not supported by the data.
You find that direct observations indicate lightspeed has fallen with statistical significance on a timescale of a few centuries? Publish it in a peer-reviewed science journal as a stand-alone piece of work, without mentioning your motivation or wider hypotheses. (You’d win the Nobel Prize for physics if you were correct.) Until then, I shall remain sceptical.
To be clear, I do not think The Genesis Flood of John Whitcomb and Henry Morris (1961), the prime inspiration of ‘Young Earth Creationism’ in the United States, has any scientific merit, and any attempt to squeeze the real fossil and geological record into a span of time as short as 10,000 years or less, in my opinion, is doomed to futility. The age of the Earth is a scientific question, and my own research – partly based on radioactive decay – suggests an age of just over 80,000 years. A discussion of The Genesis Flood may be found here:
https://www.earthhistory.org.uk/technical-issues/did-animals-escape-to-higher-ground
Whatever next…?
As an engineer I have followed the ebb and flow of this debate over many decades with great interest. These days I am much more relaxed about the exact mechanism of creation, choosing, in my old age, to look forward to the promise of a new heaven and new earth.
That said I note the Genesis account details the arrival of mankind at the end of the creation process. Ergo there was no human witness to what occurred previously. No doubt the way our forebears chose to relay that God given narrative would have been very different from the post-enlightenment customs and practices we use for recording facts today.
An engineer, prof Dr Stuart Burgess (Bristol University)opposes macro evolution. Scroll down for links to articles on flight, knee joint, and peacock feather which he puts forward as evidence against evolution. (He has also written that the intricacies of bird song, as beauty for beauty’s sake, not solely for evolutionary, reproductive purposes.
Grist to the mill or articulated links too far?
https://creation.com/prof-stuart-burgess
I would take anything an engineer has to say about biological evolution with a pinch of salt. It reminds me of Dawkins commenting on theology. Not a good idea.
What is your response to the articles? Biology does not stand alone in the sciences, nor in the question of evolution. Equating this with Dawkins entry in to questions of theology is an error of category, it seems. Following that line, Hawking, would have no contribution to make in any discussion. In a short booklet, (which I don’t have to hand) Lennox addresses the limitations of Hawking’s stance in the question of evolution.
Hi Geoff,
Prof Stuart Burgess kindly presented some of his work to my workplace CU, it was fascinating:
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-3190/abf744/pdf
Sam
I have attended one of his lectures with handouts and presentations. Yes, they were fascinating. I found his study of birdsong, with a musical note presentations, intriguing, as it brought a more than a mere biological evolutionary explanation to the table.
Sorry to catch up with this rather late but I’m surprised that no one has mentioned the best books I have found on the topic, namely Dennis Alexander, in Creation or Evolution, do we have to choose? where he is very critical of Lennox’s advocacy of ID, and his other wonderful review of the history of the interaction of science and faith, “Rebuilding the Matrix”.
Yes, you are quite right to add that one in!
Dating,
It has been determined by scientists that the Sycamore Gap tree at Hadrian’s wall, was 100-120 years old.
If there is such a wide variation in age or margin of error over such a short time span, how wide is the margin of error in pre -history creation dating?
Significant, but 20% error on 6 billion is nowhere near 6,000 years!
Here is a substantial review and critique of Dennis Alexander’s book, for some balance.
https://david.dw-perspective.org.uk/writings/creation-or-evolution-dr-denis-alexander/index.php/all
The issue for me is that God COULD have created the world any way he chose! He is quite capable of creating it in six days – just as he is capable of controlling nature to bring creation about through evolutionary and natural development. What is important is WHAT the Genesis account is saying about God’s nature, purpose and overall control in how creation came about.
George A F Knight’s book “Theology in Pictures” from 1981 was helpful to me in seeing where the main messages of Genesis 1 to 11 lay.
Does it Matter. ?
Does it matter whether the earth is Old or Young? Genesis 1-3.
A book length theological thesis, Last Things First, by Dr J. V. Fesko suggest not: it not the primary purpose
Here are some notes from the introduction:
1. Genesis 1-3
1.1 “What is the purpose of Genesis 1-3?
1.2 “Is it to tell us the who, and fact of creation and method?
1.3 “Is it to give an understanding of earth history?
1.4 “Is it largely scientific?
1.5 “Do the chapters reveal how God created?(In Job, he could have answered God’s quick-fire, volley of interrogative question of him, with “Yes I know how”.)
1.6 Does science have the answers, with the scientific investigation of nature, not scripture?
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2 NOT SCIENCE
2.1 “Therefore, the common1 idea of how is misguided.
2.2 “Genesis is historical, but its purpose is not to convey scientific information”: Paul Wooley- The Relevancy of Scripture.
2.3 “This represents the reformed approach to scripture; the analogy of faith or Scripture; not the canons of science.
2.4 Henri Blocher. In the Beginning: The Opening Chapters of Genesis: “In the case of the opening chapters of Genesis it is not plausible that the human author knew what we are taught by astronomers, geologists and scientists. Therefore, we must curb the desire to make the scientific to play a part in the actual interpretation; the interpretation must cling solely to the text.”
2.5 “ The Holy Spirit had no intention to teach astronomy”. Calvin
2.6 “Many come to Genesis 1-3 in terms of length of days, science, Old or Young Earth. Others treat it as merely an account of the origins of the physical world. Genesis does not record merely the construction stage, but the physical world upon which the drama of redemption enfolds…but rather the shadow and types of the person and work of Christ.
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3 THEOLOGICAL – CHRISTOLOGICAL
What theological message does Genesis 1-3 teach?
3.1 “The claim that Genesis 1-11 is primarily theological is not akin to neo-orthodoxy – that is a that is a genetic fallacy. It sets out not world history in general, but Redemptive History.
3.2 “The emphasis of scripture is not generally theological, but Christological- the entry point to the person and work of Christ.
3.3Alister McGrath, Scientific Theology: “ …before setting out the concepts of creation found in the Old Testament, it is important to establish a fundamental point of interpretation. For Christians, the Old Testament is to be read in the light of the New Testament and especially in the light of Christ.
Scripture centres on and enfolds Christ, who can be known definitively only through its medium.
3.3 Gen 1-3 “must be interpreted, searching for connections between the work of the first and second Adams.
3.4 “Not teaching Gen 1-3 under the systematic theological subject of creation, but under the broader category of protology.
3.5 “Neither systematic nor biblical theology should eclipse each other in the interpretative process. Carl Trueman
4 HERMENEUTIC PRESUPPOSITIONS (Of the Thesis)
4.1 “Scripture interprets scripture with analogia fides- the analogy of scripture.
4.2 “analysing the contextual information
4.3 “examining in the light of the second Adam, or Christology and eschatology.
4.4 “the first Adam points to the person and work of the second or Eschatological Adam.
3.5 “Patterns in Gen 1-3 recur through the redemptive history and reappear in the eschaton with the revelation of Christ on the final day, from the creation of man in the image of God, the nature of the garden of Eden, the work of the first Adam, shadows and types of the second Adam and his work, concluding with the Sabbath.
This is helpful:
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/are-science-faith-enemies/