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SERIES C - COMPLEX OR CONTROVERSIAL ISSUES.
SIX
C6. CREATION
This study is divided into three sections:
1 Attitudes to the universe leading to different philosophies of life.
2 Bible narrative.
3 Evidence of science.
C6.1.1 THREE VIEWS OF THE UNIVERSE.
1. A fated universe. Everything is exactly as intended by fate (or the gods or God). What happens is inevitable, the will of fate and therefore “good” - if the word good can mean anything.
2. An accidental universe. All that exists just happened as a result of random chance. All is purposeless.
3. A universe created for purpose. In this case it has clearly gone wrong. If the purpose was good, evil has invaded it (or if the purpose was evil, good has invaded it.) There is conflict because real forces are fighting and it matters which side one is on. Even if the wrong side wins, the struggle will have had purpose.
The present fashion in the Western developed world is to believe in an accidentally evolved universe, while in the Majority World where Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism predominate, belief in a fated universe is more popular. These beliefs are held emotionally and must be regarded as religion or philosophy rather than science.
Belief in a created, purposeful world with conflict between good and evil is mainly found among Jews and Christians. (Some Christian groups hold views which come near to the idea of a fated universe.)
In all groups there are independent thinkers who value Truth more than orthodoxy and seek it at all hazards.
C6.2.1. WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY?
Bible passages which refer to God as creator are too numerous to mention.
Examples:
All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made. John 1:3 KJV.
The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament sheweth His handiwork. Psalm 19:1 KJV
The reality of God is plain to see, he showed them it Himself. His eternal power and the fact that He is God - these things may be invisible but they are perfectly obvious from creation. Romans 1:19-20
Jesus Christ is God-become-visible, Head of Creation. He made everything in Heaven and Earth, the material universe we can see and the spiritual realm we can not. Every throne, power, ruler or authority - all was made by Him and for Him. He was there before it and He holds it together. Colossians 1:16-17
and see especially, Job chs 38-41 and Psalm 8.
Main study passage, Genesis 1 - 2:4.
This passage, with the “title” at the end, is the right length for a single clay writing tablet such as would have been used before the flood, the earliest form of writing. There is no reason to believe that there was ever a time when the human race could not read or write. This chapter must be one of the earliest written documents and could well be the first poem.
Genesis 1:1 to 2:4 The Poetic Structure.
Opening Statement 1:1-2
Poem in Seven Stanzas. 1:3-2:3
Concluding Summary 2:4
The Stanzas each contain.
Command
Result
Observation (“It was Good” - curiously missing from second)
(Stanzas 3 & 6 contain this pattern doubled)
Refrain (“Evening & Morning“ next day; not after seventh.)
Layout of stanzas.
1 LIGHT separation of day and night. good
2 WATER cloud system & seas.
3 LAND 1st command - dry land; good
2nd command - land vegetation. good
4 LIGHT more detail, sun moon stars. good
5 WATER sea creatures (also birds) good
6 LAND 1st command - animals; good
2nd command - Humans. good
7 REST
The word “created” is used only in v1 of Heavens & Earth, then in v21 of sea creatures, and finally in v27 of humans. Otherwise it is “made.” (I draw no special conclusions from this, but I do support the opposition to whaling. I feel unhappy about killing the only creatures apart from ourselves which God “created” rather than just “made.” Is this over sensitive?)
C6.2.2. MORE ABOUT THE POEM OF THE SEVEN DAYS.
First it is important to repeat that the “days” do not begin until v3, after the heavens and the earth have been created, and after the Spirit of God has begun to move upon the formless void of earth. It deals with God’s preparation of earth to receive God’s supreme creation, humankind.
I am personally convinced that the “evening and morning” refrain is a literary device, part of the poetry, just as another style of poetry might have rhyme or metre or alliteration. But there are other interpretations which are noted in the appendix.
C6.2.3. THE MAIN MESSAGES OF THE CHAPTER.
Three points come over as the most important (though by no means the only) messages of Genesis 1-2:4.
1. It was God who made it all. (So the universe is not accidental)
2. When he made it, it was good. (So the existence of evil proves it is not fated. There is conflict.)
3. Humans are His supreme creation, made in His own image.
The whole seven stanza poem shows God’s preparation of this planet to receive humankind, the ultimate climax of creation.
C6.2.4. THE IMPLICATIONS.
C6.2.4.1. IT WAS GOD WHO MADE IT ALL.
This means purpose. If the universe is purposeless, there is no possibility of anyone’s having any significance whatever; we are all part of an accident. If God made it, life is capable of having meaning.
At the same time, if God made it, He has rights. Humans are not in the position to make unilateral decisions about what is right and wrong.
C6.2.4.2. WHEN HE MADE IT, IT WAS GOOD.
So - something has gone seriously wrong with the whole of nature and the universe, not only with the human race.
This is good news. The existence of evil is an observed fact; so the suggestion that the world is just as it is meant to be is a frightening one. It would be even more horrendous than the suggestion that everything is a meaningless accident.
A world planned for good and gone wrong is a world in which there is hope and purpose and meaning. The struggle to make something worthwhile out of existence is a real struggle. Even if that struggle were lost its existence is better news than either of its two alternatives; - causeless accident or inevitable fate.
Not all evil in nature comes from human sin and the Bible never says it does. Clearly evil has invaded nature, attacking on many fronts. What the Bible does say is that the whole creation is waiting for the completion of human redemption before it all comes right. Romans 8:19-23.
C6.2.4.3 HUMANS SUPREME - CREATED IN GOD’S IMAGE.
The third main message of Genesis 1 is that people were created in God’s image.
This fits the facts. We are creative. Every weaver-bird’s nest is made to a design which is inborn (or inhatched) into every weaver-bird. But there is no such design born into humans. Instead we have the ability to create designs; so human houses are different from each other. Creativity is part of the image of our creator in us.
There are others. We make choices. We explore and investigate. We imagine and dream. We observe, reason and analyse. We assert our wills over nature by building bridges and irrigation channels and planting flowers. We navigate, make maps, study stars, climb mountains, sail oceans, build villages, make communities, organise society, plan joint tasks - and did all those things as much in the ancient world as in the twentieth century.
Animals were made to a blueprint. Humans are not. There is a creative life force in people which can be directed by our own wills for better or for worse. We may or may not be able to achieve what we want, but we can always choose what it is that we want. We are free to will what we will, whether or not we are free to do what we will.
- - - so reason is valid.
We can reason logically that two and two make four, knowing that the reasoning process is valid because we are not pre-programmed. Nothing in us is fated. If it were we would be fated to calculate that two and two make four but would have no valid grounds for knowing that it really does. And if it is all accidental we have no means of knowing whether our reasoning is just part of the accident. Every time we rely on our ability to think logically, we are implying that Genesis is telling the truth and we bear our creator’s image.
Not only can we reason logically, we can also recognise a difference between right and wrong, sufficiently to be able to say “God is good.” That statement implies not only that God exists but also that goodness exists and that they exist independently of each other and that we also are sufficiently independent of both to be able to draw conclusions about them. That independence which makes both reason and conscience valid are part of God’s image. In an accidental universe or in a fated universe, it could not exist.
C6.2.5. GOD’S IMAGE - SOME FURTHER CONCLUSIONS
God is Human.
Long before God entered the earthly part of the human race, taking for Himself a body by means of a virgin birth, God was human. The human race had been made in His image; so it reflects what He was before time began.
People are Eternal.
It was open to God to produce things which could afterwards be discarded, but He chose to make people in His own image. Once made they are indestructible, even to God. That is part of the Creator’s image. And having free choice, which is another part, the solemn possibility of choosing the wrong eternal destiny becomes inevitable. Not even God can remove it. The fact of being created in His image, then, leads on logically to the conclusion that every person we meet is destined for a higher and greater purpose than we can ever imagine but is capable of refusing that destiny and choosing to be wasted.
Evil had to be possible.
This is not a full explanation of why evil exists or what went wrong with nature as well as humanity. But it does clear up the starting point of why God had to leave open the possibility of evil. His own image includes ability to choose and once that ability is given it cannot be withdrawn. By creating beings in His own image, God willingly relinquished some degree of control.
Furthermore, without that ability to go wrong, there would be no ability to go right. If choice were not possible, goodness could not exist. If choice is possible, evil can exist.
C6.3.1. CREATION AND SCIENCE.
Let us first restate the principle of “Truth at all Hazards.” An investigator of fact must be true to fact. Happily, most are, in the scientific world if not in all areas.
Unhappily there is often pressure upon investigators to come to conclusions which will be socially and politically acceptable and even more important, profitable to publish. The question, “Is it true” is often secondary to publishers however important it may be to the scientist. Those who do not conform may not be published and those who are not published are unlikely to be believed.
But how much conflict is there between genuine science and the Bible?
C6.3.2. EVOLUTION
One theory directly clashes with the Bible, namely Darwinian evolution. It clashes with all the three main points of Genesis 1.
It leaves God out as creator - evolutionists may believe in God, (Darwin did) but an inactive god. Atheists virtually have to believe in evolution.
It denies that creation was created good. The survival of the fittest in a struggle for existence produces a mixture of good and evil.
It regards humankind as no more than the most advanced product of evolution. This affects the value placed on human beings.
But evolution is on the retreat. More and more scientists reject it or question it or express doubts about it or are trying to amend it as a theory in order to keep it credible.
Logically we should divide the evolution theory into three; the origin of life, the development of species from species, and the origin of human beings.
The Origin of Life.
Darwin knew nothing of DNA when he suggested that the coming together of chemicals in a warm little pond billions of years ago could have produced the first life - a simple cell.
The discovery of DNA has shown that there is no such thing as a simple form of life. Each DNA molecule is like a fully-programmed computer including both hardware and software. It contains coded information, intelligently arranged in order to produce a result. The chances of one DNA molecule coming together by accident is less than one in a number greater than the number of atoms in the known universe. (Suggestions that the laws of chance demand life elsewhere in the universe are based on miscalculations of the laws of chance. By those laws, life is impossible anywhere unless intelligently created; so if there is life in outer space it is there because God created it.)
The origin of humankind.
Here we have to leave the area of physical sciences because only bodies can be fossilised, not souls or spirits. But we can observe.
The truth of Genesis 1 is born out by the existence of the image of God in people. The concept that humans are no more than “naked apes” with no more than biological life in us simply does not fit humanity as seen in everyday life. This is one area in which we can each do our own research.
It is also the most direct conflict with the Bible which teaches that humans are made in God’s image, valuable, having spirits as well as bodies, able to know God personally, eternal in destiny and morally responsible.
Evolution generally.
What Darwin discovered was variation within the same species. The suggested method of evolution is that mutations occur at random, and are then sorted out by natural selection, which discards the failures.
There was nothing wrong in putting forward the theory, that is one way in which science works - try out different possibilities. But evolution has been being tried out for a century and so far no positive evidence for it has been found. Evidence against it is building up. In particular, when mathematicians encounter it and try to calculate the odds against, the results are devastating.
More and more high calibre scientists who were brought up to believe evolution as undoubted fact, are now turning against it in varying degrees - not necessarily accepting creation by God as an alternative. Attempts are being made to salvage the theory by more and more incredible adaptations which only bring it further into disrepute.
The theory that God created one species after another, each complete, has always fitted the evidence.
C6.3.3. SCIENCE GENERALLY.
Astronomy, Physics, Mathematics and Geology are not in conflict with the Bible.
These areas of science are not, like evolution, falling to pieces for lack of evidence or conflicting evidence. Nor do scientists disagree among themselves about their conclusions in anything like the way they disagree about evolution. The scientific conclusions which are most reliable in themselves are also the ones which agree with the Bible.
Genesis 1 says nothing about the age of the universe or of the earth. It does not deny the “big bang” or any of the processes which are now known to have taken place between what Genesis 1:1 calls “the beginning” and the existence of the “formless and empty” earth in verse 2 which was the raw material on which God worked to prepare a world for humankind.
The evidence of the “Big Bang.”
It is a pity that some Christians, misinterpreting Genesis 1, have opposed the idea of the Big Bang, because it is as clear a proof of creation as DNA. The big bang could only have succeeded in producing a universe if it was planned and designed by a master mathematician who made every calculation correct to within one thousand-billionth.
Neither the time nor the space has been wasted. Humans are the result of an intelligent plan which was systematically working towards its conclusion from the first moment of time. God calculated exactly right the relative strength of the four forces, gravitational, electromagnetic, weak-nuclear and strong-nuclear. He included just the right amount of hydrogen atoms in the initial production, and then developed stars which would act as the factories in which were made the needed elements for life, oxygen, carbon etc. Then he exploded those stars to distribute those elements. Eventually He developed a non-typical star with a solar system and one planet which was just the right size, weight, distance out, balanced chemical composition, rotational speed and temperature. That was the formless, void earth. Genesis had reached verse two.
The more we find out about them, the more the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows His handiwork.
APPENDIX Other interpretations of the “Seven Days.”
Seven days of explanation by God.
One idea (which could co-exist with the literary interpretation given earlier) is the theory that the seven days are days in which God revealed the truth of His creation in stages to Adam (or possibly to some other writer) who then wrote it down. In that case it was the pupil not the teacher who needed the rest on the seventh day. This is quite a workable theory and does not clash with scripture, although I think the literary explanation is simpler.
Seven long periods.
Another theory is that the days represent ages or long periods. This seems to have nothing to support it in either scripture or science. The separation of the creation of plants, fish and animals into different ages does not fit the evidence, nor is there any reason why the sequence Light-Water-Land should be repeated twice in such a case.
A seven day re-creation.
One very fanciful theory is that the earth “became” formless and void (an admissible but not probable meaning of the word used) after a previous inhabitation. Then seven days were taken to recondition it ready for another attempt! There is nothing in scripture to support this and in fact it is directly opposed to the theme of the chapter which is the lead-up to human creation as the climax.
Recent-creationism.
We now come to a theory which was popularised by books published in the early 1960s.
The theory is that the days were actual 24 hour periods of rotation of the earth.
Unhappily, the theory also rolled the first two verses of Genesis into the first day to produce a creation in one literal week. Even if the seven days were indeed literal days, this interpretation is untenable from reading the passage. The first day unquestionably begins - “And God said ‘Let there be light.’”
Recent-creationism may well fit much scientific evidence - the world is probably younger than the early evolutionists believed - but recent-creationism is not what the Bible teaches.
The Bible narrative is not presented as a diary or schedule of events. It takes items in a logical not a chronological order, describing facts in a manner which is picturesque and poetic and no less accurate for that. There is no reason why events should be presented in strict sequence. The main message of the poem, the great build-up to the creation of mankind in God’s image, is lost if it is reduced to a mere timetable.
The sun does not appear until the fourth day, and an evening and a morning cannot exist without a sunrise or a sunset.
This idea of a recent universe conflicts, not merely with the shaky theory of evolution but with the solidly founded findings of astronomy, physics and mathematics - sciences which are definitely “on our side” if we believe the Bible. If the evidence of astronomy is true, then the heavens declare the glory of God more wonderfully than was ever imagined until recent discoveries.
On the other hand, if light beams are reaching us from stars that are more light-years away than there have been years since creation; then what the heavens are declaring is not the glory of God but total nonsense.
ESSENTIAL SCIENTIFIC READING.
Creation & Evolution. The Facts and the Fallacies. Alan Hayward.
TRIANGLE. £4-99
This book is highly recommended, for its scientific authority, up-to-date facts, obvious common sense, faithfulness to scripture, courtesy to opposing views and not least for its superb English.