In The Beginning part one
Dominic Rizzo
In this article we will examine the Biblical and scientific evidences which shows that Genesis can be taken literally
and that the six day creation spoken of in Genesis fits the Biblical and
scientific evidences. The theory of evolution is not believed because of
scientific evidence, science is against the theory of
evolution.
The next three articles will cover the issues of time and
the age of the universe. If it can be shown that the Bible and scientific
evidence points to a young universe/earth, then evolution doesn’t stand up.
Before we start, lets define
some terms.
Many
of the modern controversies in the Bible can be solved with hermeneutics.
Hermeneutics is the science of Biblical interpretation. The purpose of
hermeneutics is to establish guidelines and rules for interpretation. One of
the principles of hermeneutics is to always exegete (pronounced ex-a-gete) a passage. To exegete is to take out from the verse, deriving its meaning from the context. For
example, where the Bible says that God created everything in six days (Ex.
There are two types of evolution, macro and micro.
Microevolution is provable, but macro has
never been proven. Micro speaks of small changes within a species. There
are certain amounts of change and adaptability (natural selection) that God has
provided in His creation for survival. Natural selection can never produce new genes, it only selects among the preexisting types of genes. Farmers use
Microevolution to grow better tomatoes, but they remain tomatoes.
Macroevolution suggests that these small changes can
cross over to different species using natural selection, for example a reptile
evolving into a bird.
Quoting from Job 38:2-4, God asks Job, “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without
knowledge? Now gird up your loins like a man, and I will ask you, and
you instruct Me! Where
were you when I laid the foundations
of the Earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding." When God created the universe and everything
in it, there were no Christians or evolutionists around to instruct Him.
Evolution is not a science, it is a belief system just
like other religion and worldview. You will need more faith to believe the
macro evolution idea that everything that exists came from nothing by chance,
without a purpose or plan or mind (thought) behind it. Within the Church this
issue is controversial. There are some Christians who take the Bible literally
where it should be taken literally (some parts should be taken figuratively,
for example Jesus is the door) and believe that God created everything in six
literal days. There are other Christians who believe in progressive
creationism, or Theistic evolution. Both progressive and Theistic evolutionist
believe that God started creation, but used the principles of evolution to
create, accepting evolution in varying amounts and accepting long ages of the
universe and earth. The only difference between these two is that progressive
creationist allows God to do a little more. Both systems put God and the unproven
theory of evolution together. There is another theory called the day age
theory. This theory says that each of the six days represented large amounts of
time. The problem is that to believe in any of the theories that supports God
using evolution in any way, you will have to rely on non-Biblical material, and
read into the Bible what is not there (eisegete). The
cults and false religions usually read into the verse rather than taking out or
drawing from the verse. If evolution was in any way involved, you will have
death (as one of the agents of change) on the scene for millions of years, the
weak species die and the strong survive passing on their better genes. But the
Bible says that death came through Adam. There was no death until Adam sinned.
The Theistic, or progressive creation scenario, you have many hominoids
(soul-less man like creatures) living and dying, and then one day God chooses
to give one of them a spirit. The reason that God created earth was for man.
Why would He create the world billions of years before He would be able to put
man into the world? Man who is made in His image, not a soul-less hominoid.
Jesus
said in Matt 19:4, "Have you not read that He who
created them from the beginning made
them male and female?" When was this
Beginning? Using the Biblical genealogy of man from Adam to Christ, even if
you have some “missing” generations you will not get more than 10,000 years.
Since man was made in the beginning there couldn’t be any long ages from day
one to day six, or any long gaps of time. Neither were
there any ages of death and struggle, because after God created everything, He
said that it was good. Death came
through Adam’s sin (Romans
In
the early 1900’s, many leaders in Church were fooled into thinking that science
had proven that evolution was true and that it’s methods of dating the earth
were valid. So they began to compromise, looking for a way to have the Bible
fit into the "scientific" discoveries of the day. The liberal
"Christian” groups didn't mind this, they didn't believe in a God of
miracles or that Genesis was fact. Quoting from Dr. Henry Morris,
“The
sad fact is that evolutionism has also deeply affected evangelical schools and
churches. After all, even modern ultra-liberal theological schools (e.g.
Harvard, Yale) and denominations (e.g. Methodist, Episcopalian) were once
orthodox and zealous for the Scriptures.
These institutions have traveled down the road of compromise with
evolutionary humanism farther than most, but many evangelicals today seem to
have embarked on the same icy road, unaware of the dangers ahead and impatient
with those who would warn them. Evangelicals (meaning those
who accept the inerrant authority of the Bible.)"generally dare not
call it compromise" and perhaps are not even aware of it. But compromise
they have, in many, many instances. Some have accepted full-blown theistic
evolution, but many more believe in either "progressive creation" or
reconstructive creation " (i.e., the so -called Gap Theory)... the sad
truth is that many evangelical leaders, who profess to believe in Biblical
inerrancy and authority, have also compromised with evolution."
When Christians start accepting the beliefs of fallible
science (which is almost always changing), this will lead to other false
un-Biblical beliefs. For example, Hugh Ross, a Christian Progressive
creationist, (featured many times on Focus
on the Family), believes that science has proven that the earth was formed
over millions of years by slow gradual erosion, layering of sediment and soil.
Because he believes what he thinks science has proven, he is forced to say that
the flood of Noah was a local flood. Why? Because if you have a worldwide
flood, then there is no need for millions of years to carve the earth and layer
the geological columns. The flood of Noah’s day lasted a year. This would be
enough to change the earth. We have further evidence of this. Mt. St. Helen
erupted in 1980. In one day it carved out a miniature sized Grand Canyon. The
eruption of Mount St. Helen produced many feet of stratified rocks, which look
millions of years old, but were produced in days or hours. Radioactive measurements* of these
rocks show them to be millions of years old, but we know they were formed
in 1980 because scientists saw them formed. What would have resulted from the
worldwide flood in Noah’s time, which lasted about one year, with a thousand
times the activity of Mt St Helen? Science needs billions and billions of years
to have their theory become workable, but even that is not enough time. In my
article titled “not a chance I pointed out that it would take not billions of
years but quadrillions of years just a "simple" cell to evolve from
pure chance.
Suppose
a brilliant scientist came up with a theory that states "modern man
evolved from a single celled amoebas in just ten seconds”. The scientific world
would say that is ridiculous. Then suppose that this scientist changed his
theory and said it took 2 to 3 billion years for amoebas to evolve into man.
The scientific world would accept this. Do you see what happened? Give it
billions of years and the ridiculous becomes acceptable!
Actually,
time is the enemy of evolution. They demand that the simple becomes more
complex. But time and the second law of thermal dynamics (not theory) states
that orderly things become disordered, new things get old and break down,
living things age and wear out. Since a simple cell and other complex life
forms would take more than a quadrillion years, projecting any time is useless
to evolutionist, Progressive creationist, and Theistic Evolutionist.
Lets
look at what the Bible and scientific evidence has to say.
First
lets start with a question. The Bible says that God will destroy the earth and
create a new heaven and earth. Will He take billions of years to do this? Or
will He do it like He has done in the past, by speaking it into existence? When
Jesus was on earth He performed His miracles instantly. He turned water into
the finest wine, normally this kind of wine has to be aged to be this fine.
Smelly Lazarus was raised from the dead, instantly.
With
God nothing is impossible. Paraphrasing a class that A.E. Wilder Smith, a
scientist with three earned doctorates, gave at Calvary Chapel: time is not a problem for God. God invented
time. Before time was invented He had all the "non-time" in the
non-world to think up, or plan in detail His creation, if that is what He needed to do.
It
is beyond our capacity to fathom a being who existed before time and space and
is not affected by time. He is not subject to the ways of man. He is not
limited by creating in a step by step fashion, moment by moment. He is the
unchanging, all knowing God, His wisdom in all things is unfathomable. Isaiah
40:28, “Do you not know? Have you not
heard? The Everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth does
not become weary or tired. His understanding is inscrutable.” Isaiah
55:8,9,11, “For My thoughts are not your
thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are
higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts
than your thoughts. So will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; It will not return to me empty, without accomplishing what I desire,
and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.”
Psalm
33:9, “For He spoke, and it was done;
He commanded, and it stood fast.” The context of this verse shows it is talking
about God’s creation. There is no room in this verse to put in millions of
years. If some thing is done, this
means it is completed, and not, still in process!
From
the above scriptures it is obvious that God’s
Word is all that was needed. He doesn’t have to rely on His (time)
Creation. This is the God that we can worship and adore. Jesus holds all things together by the word
of His power. Matter is not eternal it had a beginning. We are talking about a
being who creating things out of nothing.
He made the elements from nothing by using His power. Why would time stop
Him? He created time for us. Time can
never be an issue for the uncreated Creator.
In
the scientific world, the long ages of the universe is not believed by all:
“The age
of our globe is presently thought to be some 4.5 billion years, based on
radio-decay rates of uranium and thorium. Such `confirmation' may be
short-lived, as nature is not to be discovered quite so easily. There has been
in recent years the horrible realization that radio-decay rates are not as
constant as previously thought, nor are they immune to environmental
influences. And this could mean that the atomic clocks are reset during some
global disaster, and events which brought the Mesozoic [the dinosaur age] to a
close may not be 65 million years ago, but rather, within the age and memory of
man."-Fredrick B. Jeaneman, "Secular Catastrophism," in Industrial Research and
Development, June 1982, p. 21.
We shall now cover some of the Biblical
support for a young universe. First, if you were God and you wanted to tell
your creation that you created every thing in six 24-hour days how would you do
it? The Bible is plain enough on this point. Exod.
31:17 says for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, but on the seventh
day He ceased from labor... Genesis1: 5 says "and there was evening and
there was morning, one day." This is the natural way the Hebrews describe
a day, it starts in the evening and ends in the morning. All Hebrew scholars
agree that when there is a number in front of the Hebrew word Yom (day) it
should always be taken literally. If God did not mean six literal days, then
why did God say in the fourth commandment: “For in six days the Lord made the
heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh
day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and sanctified it.” There is no astronomical reason to have seven
days. The 24 hour day, and 12 months
cycle that makes a year, came about because the earth revolves around the sun,
and this is the time it takes to complete each action. But the seven-day week
came about by a command of the Lord. He set the example for man. If He created
everything in six thousand years and rested for one thousand, and that is to be
the example, then I sure would hate to go to work on Monday morning!
Some
say, since he created the Sun on the fourth day how was there light on the
first day? This is not a problem to God, it says in Revelation that the sun
will be no more and God will be the light. In Genesis it said that on day one,
God
created light it means just that, there were not particles and waves that make
up light before he created them. The Sun and stars are not the only source of
light.
This
Biblical account presents a creation in which each thing was fully functional
when it was made. The trees did not come from seeds; they had fruit on them.
Adam was not an infant. All things appeared mature as if they had a history.
God created with the appearance of age. When Adam looked down at the rock that
he was standing on, it looked old, as if it was there for along time, yet it
was a couple of older than he was. John D. Morris points out “I suspect that if modern scientist had been
able to examine Adam immediately after he had been created, they might have
been able to discern that he had just been created, that he had not lived a
life of, say twenty-five years or so. Certainly they would have found no decay
in his teeth, no calcification in his bones, no cholesterol in his arteries,
and no defective genes. Careful investigation might have shown that the only
way he could be in that state was to be newly created that he showed no
objective evidence of deterioration caused by age. Superficially, he appeared to be a grown man.
He was functionally mature, but only minutes old. The same could probably be
said for the plants and animals.” The Young Earth pg.41.
Quoting from the book In Six Days, Why 50 Scientists Choose to Believe in Creation, pg.
120, “ I then realized that had God
wanted to say a billion years rather than six days, he could have said it, very
simply, in the way he spoke to Abraham: ‘I will make your offspring like the
dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust, then your offspring
could be counted’ (Gen. 13:16). In the
same way He could have said, ‘I took as many years as there are particles of
dust on the earth to create the heavens, the earth, the seas and all that is in
them…’ and it would have sounded very impressive but he said six days. Would he
have said this if it were of no concern?”
Christians
who are progressive creationist have to put general revelation (what they see
in nature) above special revelation (what is revealed in Scripture) that’s a
problem because general revelation is imperfect. Our minds are effected by the
fall, by bias, by men who do not know everything, by a fallen creation. IF we
treated the rest of scripture like many treat Genesis Chapter 1 to 11 you would
end up with nothing worth while. A progressive creationist believes that God
created over millions and millions of years, What about a progressive
resurrectionist, who believes that Jesus gradually rose from the dead.
It
all comes down to this; in Who do we
place our trust? Will we trust God’s word? If not, we will have to deny a lot
of the fundamental truths of the Christian faith. Quoting from Doug Phillips “There are only two ways that we can be
absolutely sure of anything. Either you know absolutely everything! Or you know
somebody who does. (God) A scientist might not be asking the right questions.
He might be asking the right questions but not all the right questions. He
might not have all the facts; there are thousand of reasons why we have a
limited perspective. This is why we believe it is critical that we trust God at
his word…Our reason is tainted by the effect of sin. We know that the world is
effected by sin. When we look at that world it isn’t a perfect revelation of
the original perfect world that God created. The world we see is and imperfect
example tainted by sin of the glorious creation that God made.”
God
will one day resurrect everyone who ever lived, no matter where his or her dust
happens to be. Is that too hard for him? He can not lie, He will do it. Our God
is an awesome God, no else exists.
Below
we enclose a very interesting conversation between a Bed and Breakfast owner
and his guest from The Biologist by George
V. Caylor.
“One
of the best aspects of my wife JoAnne’s Bed and
Breakfast is the chance for a great conversation with an interesting guest.
People fascinate me, and the laid-back atmosphere of the bed and breakfast
allows me to get to know our guests well. I was with a congressman the moment
the Monica Lewinsky story broke, and discussed the possible impeachment. I
enjoyed visiting with a Russian attorney who wrote the post-communism Russian
Constitution. But all our guests have good stories, and I like to hear them
all. I ‘replay’ them later, and I have the ability to remember conversations
nearly word for word. That memory skill comes from either thirty years as a
financial planner, or six years as a touring musician.
One
of the most interesting, and disturbing conversations, was with a molecular
biologist working in genetic research. Jeff and his wife were in from New York
to celebrate the 2000 New Year. I think they just wanted out of New York City,
and Lynchburg is about as "out" as he could get! Jeff described
himself as a "secular Jew," which meant that he was not into
practicing his religion. (There seems to be a lot of secular Jews and secular
Christians around these days.) I asked Jeff about his profession and he told me
that he was a molecular biologist, specializing in genetic research. He and his
team were scientific "detectives" tracking down the cause of disease.
Our
conversation went something like this:
G:
"Sounds like pretty complicated work."
J:
"You can’t imagine how complicated!"
G:
"Try me."
J:
"I’m a bit like an editor, trying to find a spelling mistake inside a
document larger than four complete sets of Encyclopedia Britannica. One hundred
volumes, thousands and thousands of pages of small print words."
G:
"With the computer, you can just use ‘spell check’!"
J:
"There is no ‘spell check’ because we don’t know yet how the words are
supposed to be spelled. We don’t even know for sure which language. And it’s
not just the ‘spelling error’ we’re looking for. If any of the punctuation is out
of place, or a space out of place, or a grammatical error, we have a mutation
that will cause a disease."
G:
"So how do you do it?"
J:
"We are learning as we go. We have already ‘read’ about two articles in
that encyclopedia, and located some ‘typo’s’. It should get easier as time goes
by." G: "How did all that genetic information get there?" J:
"Do you mean, did it just happen? Did it evolve?"
G:
"Bingo. Do you believe that the information evolved?"
J:
"George, nobody I know in my profession believes it evolved. It was
engineered by ‘genius beyond genius,’ and such information could not have been
written any other way. The paper and ink did not write the book! Knowing what
we know, it is ridiculous to think otherwise."
G:
"Have you ever stated that in a public lecture, or in any public
writings?"
J:
"No. It just evolved."
G:
"What? You just told me ---?"
J:
"Just stop right there. To be a molecular biologist requires one to hold
on to two insanities at all times. One, it would be insane to believe in evolution
when you can see the truth for yourself. Two, it would be insane to say you
don’t believe in evolution. All government work, research grants, papers, big
college lectures - everything would stop. I’d be out of a job, or relegated to
the outer fringes where I couldn’t earn a decent living."
G:
"I hate to say it, Jeff, but that sounds intellectually dishonest."
J:
"The work I do in genetic research is honorable. We will find the cures to
many of mankind’s worst diseases. But in the meantime, we have to live with the
‘elephant in the living room’."
G:
"What elephant?"
J:
"Creation design. It’s like an elephant in the living room. It moves
around, takes up an enormous amount of space, loudly trumpets, bumps into us,
knocks things over, eats a ton of hay, and smells like an elephant. And yet we
have to swear it isn’t there!"
I
didn’t use Jeff’s family name, although I doubt many New Yorkers read the
"Ledger." After all, Jeff is a good man who deserves to earn a good
living. I am just a bit angry that we allow him to be bullied by evolutionists.
It makes me yearn for the day when all molecular biologists will be able to
say: "Hey, there’s an elephant in our living room! Maybe we can make
friends with it!"
In
part two, we will answer some of the objections that the old earth groups bring
up.
* In the next article, we will cover some of
the reasons why Radiometric dating measurements can not be trusted.