Readers Are Leaders
Here is a must-read book for anyone concerned about whether the book of Genesis can be understood as a scientifically accurate and authoritative guide to the origins of our world.
The book is In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood. In it, Dr. Walt Brown explains, using easily understood, experimentally verifiable scientific laws, why the geologic evidence supports a young earth recently shaped by a global flood, not billions of years of random chance.
I know when I was in high school, evolution was a Fact, and humans were monkeys that learned to use tools. If you wanted to believe in God too that was fine, but this was science and God didn't have much to say about it. I have several Christian acquaintances who espouse theistic evolution - the idea that the earth is billions of years old and we evolved from a primordial soup, but God directed the process to get us where we are today.
The problem with this line of thinking is what happens when you follow it to its logical conclusion: If God used evolution to create man, then God by definition introduced death into the world before man sinned. Consequently, the wages of sin is not death, Adam and Eve are abstractions, and the new Adam, Jesus Christ, is irrelevant. Who needs a Savior when the Fall is a fairy tale?
I can't do justice to the book in a blog post; read for yourself. If you're local, I have a copy I'm willing to lend out. The full text is also published online at www.creationscience.com.
3 comments:
When I was first learning about the Bible, I had to consider the issue of the first chapter of Genesis vs. what science claims about the age of the earth. It seemed that the choices were three: a) the Bible is wrong, b) the language in Genesis is just figurative and a day could be millions of years, and c) the Genesis account is true and literal and science is wrong and the earth is only about 6,000 years old. Later, I was challenged to look at the first few verses of Genesis more closely to see if the earth existed or not before the six days.
It seemed strange to me that the six days were supposed to be when God created the earth, yet the earth existed after verse 1, and in verse 2 the earth is described as being in darkness and covered in water. So the earth existed before the six days.
Verse 1 says God created the earth. You can take this in a literal sense, and it does not say how long ago this occurred. Verse 2 says the earth was covered in water and in darkness, "null and void" I think is how the King James Version words it. Whether this condition of being in a desolate state is how the earth was created in verse 1 or if an event happened, perhaps similar to Noah's flood, that destroyed the surface of the earth and brought it to a state of desolation is not made clear here, but there is evidence elsewhere in the Bible that suggests that verse 2 is not the condition of the earth after God created it in verse 1.
Anyway, it is after this, and Genesis doesn't say how long, when the six days occurred. These can be 24 hour literal days that occurred 6,000 years ago, and I believe they are. But even a literal reading of the Bible does not indicate how long ago verse 1 was, or verse 2, and these could have been millions of years ago.
There could have been life on the earth prior to verse 2 and this could explain the fossil record. Then in six days God renewed the face of the earth, repaired the damage, prepared it for man, restoring the plant and animal species that existed prior to the desolation described in verse 2.
I know this goes contrary to the teachings of most mainstream churches, but I cannot find anyone, either on the side of creation or on the side of evolution, who can show me why this would be wrong. It seems completely consistant with a literal reading of the Bible and all the fossil evidence.
Author,
Thanks for your input. Regarding your suggestion about a re-creation, I'd challenge your appeal to the fossil evidence. Fossils on earth show complete and unique species, not intermediate forms (although there have been a number of fraudulent attempts to produce them). While it may be true that you can't pin down exact time frames using the Bible, there's no reason to postulate millions of years when there's no known process that can create life from nothing, and no evidence that it happened. The simplest explanation (recent creation) is usually the best.
Did Kevin finally return the copy he borrowed like 5 years ago?
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