God, Science and Genesis 1:1a.

I have found that most of those who call Christians stupid for believing the Bible, know very little about it, and may never even have read it. Either that, or they will take their own interpretation of this or that verse and then slam us for believing that interpretation. Its called setting up a straw man, you know those who are easy to tear down! And I have seen this perpetrated on the very first phrase of the very first verse of the very first book of the Bible. Well I guess it saves having to read it :).

Genesis 1:1(a) says “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, .....” An atheistic “sermon” I heard from one of the militant atheists started by interpreting this to be saying that the heavens and the earth were created at the same time. And (the sermon continues) since Science tells us that the earth was formed way after the heavens were formed, way, way after, then whole thing should be thrown out from the very beginning. But surely we need to ask if this reading of the text is correct, if this what was intended to be communicated, if this is the point and focus of what is being said.

If you ask a man wearing yellow tinted glasses what colour a zebra is (assuming he has never seen one before) you are likely to be told 'yellow and black', or if the glasses were red tinted, the observed colours would likely be pink and black. The point I am making is that if we are to understand Scripture correctly there are a number of things we need to take into account. In particular we must be careful that we do not read the text with our 21st Century glasses (which can easily distort what is being said), and with our presuppositions firmly in place (i.e. we all know that God does not exist, right?). There are many many difficulties in understanding and interpreting Scripture. For instance, the distance between us and the writers of the Hebrew Scriptures is enormous in both time and culture. And while this is not the place to go into this in detail we do, we need in the first instance to understand how the early readers would have understood the text. If our interpretation is correct, it would need to have made sense to those to whom it was first written.

So let's come back to our phrase “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, ...” How would this have been understood by the first readers of this phrase? Let me suggest several things, firstly they would understand that there was a beginning, that the heavens and the earth were not always there. It is surely interesting to note that for a long time many Scientists were saying that the cosmos was indeed always there, and at that time such people laughed at the Biblical statement that there was a beginning. These days virtually nobody believes this (various forms of the Big Bang theory hold the day). Secondly this phrase states that there is a being, identified here as “God,” who is outside of space, time and matter, and who created the said space, time and matter out of nothing. As I have said elsewhere, once you admit a beginning, the logical options are very few, in fact there are only two. Either “In the beginning someone or something outside of space time and matter created everything that is out of nothing,” or “In the beginning nothing created everything that is out of nothing.” If we are to be consistent with the Scientific principle of cause and effect, and if there was beginning, then one or the other of these two options has to be true. To me the first option is much more believable (though this is not how I came to believe). And I have to say that it seems to me to be more than a tad ridiculous to laugh at those of us who believe the first view, since the second view can only be held by faith, and that by a faith that is not only without a scrap of empirical evidence to support it, but a faith that contradicts the law of cause and effect!

I want to be clear that at this point of the argument, the logic does not necessarily point to the Judeo Christian God as the only option for the creator. That is an entirely separate argument. Along these lines, it is interesting to me to note the case of the famous (almost life long) atheist Anthony Flew. Flew, though he became a theist towards the end of his life, did not become a Christian. Among other things what lead him to the conclusion that some form of god existed, was the incredible complexity of life. Life is so complex that he could no longer believe that it all happened by chance. He became a theist, but got no further than that!

So to recap, the phrase we are discussing here is saying that there was a beginning, there is a creator and this creator created everything that is out of nothing. In relation to our skeptics interpretation, we can (hypothetically) ask our ancient reader if he understood this to be also saying that the heavens and the earth were created at the same time. But I am not sure it is a valid question to ask him (or her). If you stand at the bottom of a mountain range looking up, the question of whether the peek you see over the the top of the first rise is the same mountain, is in many ways an unfair question. You do not have enough information to answer it. With respect to the skeptics question, I want to say firstly that I don't think it is a question that would have occurred to our first reader. He would have no frame of reference to ask it, and in any case he would not have had enough information from this phrase alone to answer the question. On the other hand the rest of Genesis 1 clearly points to their being stages of the earth's development. And in Genesis 2:4 the entire period that encompassed the stages in Genesis 1 is telescoped into a single period there. So why would it be unreasonable to think that the stages of the creation of the heavens and the earth would not similarly be telescope in Genesis 1:1. What I am saying is that to insist that Genesis 1:1 precludes stages of development is to read a lot more into the text than is really there.

Unfortunately many Christians do similar types of exposition of texts when they want to prove a point that the text may not support. It is called Eisegesis, which is reading into the text (Greek “eis” means “into”), as opposed to exegesis which means "to lead out" of the text. Eisegesis is defined as the process of interpreting a text or portion of text in such a way that it introduces one's own presuppositions, agendas, and/or biases into and onto the text. When people complain to me that “You can make the Bible say anything you want.” I usually answer “Yes, and using exactly the same rules you need to use to do this, I can make the dictionary say the very same thing. And since I realized this, I have stopped using the dictionary” :-). Thank the Lord for spellchecker!

So where am I going with this? What I am saying is that things may not be as black and white as some (on both sides of the divide) would have us believe. Nobody has all the truth, not one of us has arrived. We will not arrive at the truth by calling one another names. When we label one another as stupid or hieratic, we shut down communication. For the Christian we are to be Ambassadors for Christ, we are to be eager to preserve unity, we are to respect all who are made in the image of God and that means everyone. It seems to me that we have a ways to go!

Is religion the root of all evil?

It is not hard to figure out which side of the fence the late Christopher Hitchens was on in this question. The title of his book “God is not great: how religion poisons everything,” makes it quite clear. To take his side for a moment, one would have to be blind or ignorant or both, not to see that far too many wars have been fought over religion, and far too many atrocities perpetrated in the name of God. And this is not to even consider the number of friends who have become enemies or families that have been split over religious issues. So Hitchens' thesis is not without merit, but is it just religion that poisons things, and is it always poison, does it never bring the good?”

Hitchens would have been the last to say that all religion was fanatical, but his point seems to be that if you do away with religion, you do away with fanatical religion. It's hard fault his logic there. And we can deal with pollution and the need for toxic waste disposal the very same way. I mean if there were no people there would be a lot less pollution, right? So let's get rid of the human race! It would solve a lot of problems, including the one Hitchens sees. As I said, Hitchens would be the last to say that all religion is fanatical, and I would be the last to say that religion has not been poisonous. But is religion the only “ism” that poisons us? We need to ask what was the philosophy that brought with it the most atrocities and the most destruction in the last Century? I am thinking of Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, Pol Pot and others with their multimillions slain. Hitchens would argue that it was not atheism per se that was the cause of these atrocities, but we can't have it both ways. Perhaps, just perhaps it is not religion in and of itself that is the cause of all the poisoning. Perhaps there is a better explanation.

It was not that long ago that I was complaining to the God that I felt misunderstood. The response I got boiled down to “You think that you are misunderstood. Buddy you ain't seen nothing yet. What about all those religious types who say they represent me, but don't? What about all the self righteous hypocrites who speak for me, but don't even know me? What about all the blame, all the bad mouthing, all the false accusations, all the nasty things people say and think about Me? You think you have a problem. My son, you ain't seen nothing.”

What I am saying is that God gets a lot of blame that belongs elsewhere. Religion too gets a bad name, and some of it is deserved, and some of it is not. The Scriptures themselves distinguish between true and false religion. “Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world” (James 1:27). Who is going to condemn visiting orphans? If I could have had a conversation with Christopher Hitchens I would have asked him what were the things about religion that he had so much trouble with? I am pretty sure that we would have been in substantial agreement. And if he were to have asked me about the things about atheism that I have trouble with, I think again we would be in substantial agreement. So is all religion, are all Christians evil? No. Do I believe that everything atheists says is wrong and that all atheists are inherently evil? Well no, many times no more than the rest of us! The bigger question is "Is what we believe helping us to become better people?" I know those on "both" sides of the theist/atheist divide who are getting better and those who are getting worse!

So perhaps it is not religion in and of itself that is at the root of the problem. But if it's not, then what exactly is it? As always the Scriptures have the best explanation. In condemning that form of religion that was concerned only with image, Jesus told his disciples that “out of the heart come evil thoughts - murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander” (Matthew 15:19). True religion is all about having my heart changed through ongoing relationship with Him as we surrender to His Lordship of our lives. So does religion poison everything? No it is our hearts, our judgemental unforgiveness, our greed and self seeking that poisons everything. And what about my other question "Is there never anything good?" Well the fruit true religion is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5:22,23). These things don't poison us they make the World go round. I am not perfect by a long shot, but I am in process of getting better. Ask those who know me best!

If you want to pray: Lord I need more of You in my life, more of the fruit of Your Spirit. Forgive me for the many times I fall short of Your glory. Let Your kingdom come in my life right here, right now. In Jesus name Amen.

Creation or Science or Creation and Science?

Perhaps the biggest stumbling blocks for thinking non-Christian are the faith Science issues, and perhaps the biggest of these has to do with the Genesis creation story. In particular it has to do with the age of the earth. Among Christians the interpretation of the creation story is surely the most divisive. There are many points of view and we cannot go into them all here. But the biggest controversy seem to center around the interpretation of the Hebrew word "yom" translated "day" in most English versions. Perhaps because of the controversial nature of these things the subject is often avoided altogether, but this is not a good way to deal with difficulties. In particular if there are viable explanations that allow for a convincing defensible rational position for a Biblical world view, we need to contend for them. For this and other reasons I want to address the Creation issues head on. I am aware that not everyone will agree.

Genesis 1 tells us that there were just six “days” of creation, during which the world is turned from being a dark, inhospitable water world without life or light, into the world substantially as we see it today. But it gets worse, because according to the chronology of Genesis 1, the sun and the moon do not appear until “day” three, the “day” after vegetation appeared. At first glance it all seem very naive and unbelievable to modern man.

But let's start looking at this in more detail by considering Genesis 1:2 which says “The earth was without form, and void; darkness was on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” So according to this verse the initial state of the created earth was dark, void of life, and water covered its whole surface (dry land does not appear until “day” three). This is a remarkable description for “naive primitive mankind” being as it is, entirely consistent with modern Scientific models of the earth's development. For example astrophysicist Hugh Ross in his book 'Why the universe is the way it is' says “During Earth's infancy, its atmosphere was opaque to light.” In other words light could simply not get through the dense atmosphere and so it was indeed dark. Ross continues “Earth started off as a water world – a planet with water covering the whole of its surface” (pages 52,53). If nothing else such consistency of the records should prompt us to look a little deeper into the subject rather than engaging in ridicule and dismissing the whole thing our of hand.

As I already said, the focal point of the controversy among Christians who want to hold to the integrity of the Scriptures centres around the meaning of the Hebrew word “yom” translated as “day” in many (but not all) places in the Hebrew Scriptures. Now “yom” can certainly mean a 24 hour day, but it can also mean a finite duration of time. There are shades of this even in English, since the word “day” in such phrases as “the day of the Jackal” does not mean a literal 24 hour period. I am told that in the Hebrew one of the alternative literal meanings of “yom” is eon, or age. So the controversy among Christians is whether to interpret “yom” in Genesis 1 as a 24 hour period or to think of "yom" as an age or eon.

One of the basic principles of a Biblical interpretation is that of comparison of Scripture with Scripture. The point is to bring clarification of the various possible meanings of the text. In this case the word “yom” appears in the alternative description of creation in Genesis 2 (there are in fact several accounts of creation in Scripture). The NIV translates Genesis 2:4 as “This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created. When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.”

It is important to understand that every translation is an interpretation, and the NIV is no exception. I happen to think it is the right interpretation, but it is an interpretation. It is not obvious from the NIV that the word “yom” appears in the original Hebrew of this verse, but it does. It is more obvious from the NKJV which reads “This is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.” The NIV is interpreting “yom” in this verse to mean the whole period (i.e. six “days”) of creation. And it is surely a correct interpretation because “yom” cannot mean a literal 24 hour day here. Of course this does not automatically mean that the word does not mean 24 hours in Genesis 1, because in other places it does mean a 24 hour period. But it should at least be a cause to carefully research the meaning. On the other hand if in one creation account it does not mean a 24 hour period, surly it is not too much of a stretch to understand that it is not meant to be understood as a 24 hour period in another account. Ross' book goes into this in a lot and detail, more than is appropriate here, and I want to refer the reader to it or other sources to check this out. In my view the day age understanding of "yom" in Genesis 1 is the correct interpretation of the text. This is not just because of what Hebrew scholars say about it. It seems to me to be no coincidence that this interpretation of the narrative is highly consistent and even insightful in terms of what we currently understand from Science.

Coming back to Genesis 1:2 the description of the earth as dark, void and covered with water, is given from the vantage point of one who might have been there on the surface of the earth observing it all. It is hard to imagine the original readers as taking any other point of view that that of an observer on the surface of the earth. So it seems reasonable to assume that this is the vantage point of the narrator throughout the entire creation narrative. This is important for a resolution of issue of the sun and the moon not appearing until the fourth day. It should be noted that light had already appeared on creation “day” one (“Let there be light and there was light"). So there was light on day 1, but the sun and the moon had not yet appeared. How are we to understand this?

We get a clue from from the Science. After saying that infant Earth's atmosphere was opaque to light Ross, in his book, continues “In its youth, the planet's atmosphere was translucent. Only when what astronomers and physicists call 'middle age' (an age of over 4 billion years) did its atmosphere become transparent enough to enable its inhabitants to observe the most distant object in the Universe.” (p 53). With the day- age understanding of Genesis 1, the two changes in earth's development (from dark to translucent and from translucent to transparent) fit in well with the Biblical record of light appearing on day one and the sun and the moon appearing on day four. But how does this jive with the text? Confirmation of this as the correct understanding of the passage comes when you look at the Hebrew verbs in verse 1 (God created the heavens and the earth) and verse 16 (God made two great lights). I am told that the word translated “made” in verse 16 has the implication their creation had happened some time in the past. Atheists have ridiculed the Genesis account of the sun and the moon not appearing until day four (even with a day age understanding of the text), but this would make perfect sense from the vantage point of our hypothetical observer. The point is that it was during this "day" that for the first time the sun, moon and stars would be visible from the surface of the earth. This understanding of the text not only avoids an apparent contradiction of light appearing both on day one and day four, but makes sense of the progression from a scientific point of view. It was on “day” three that vegetation appeared. The text tells us that some form of light had appeared on day one, and translucent light is enough for photosynthesis to take place, a process that we now know to be necessary for the further development of life.

There is a further point to make about the sun and the moon appearing on day four, and this has to do with the necessary preparation for the higher life forms created on “day” five. We are told that the appearance of the sun moon and stars on day four was for “signs and seasons, and for days and years” (verse 14). On “day” five God would create "great sea creatures, every living thing that moves, and every winged bird." The point I am wanting to make is that many of the “kinds” of creature created on day five would need signs and seasons to set their biological clocks, and in the case of birds for migrational purposes.

So part of what I am saying here is that if if one understands "yom" to mean eon or age rather than a literal 24 hour day (an interpretation consistent with other parts of Scripture) then many of the so called contradictions of this passage with Science disappear. Since the formations of the mountains and the like via plate tectonics takes time, it makes sense that the dry land did not appear until "day" three. Also it does not seem to be too much of a stretch to see “day” five as at least overlapping with the so called Cambrian period. It is interesting to me (though I am not at this point drawing firm conclusions from it) that from the beginning Darwin conceded that the theory of evolution failed to account for the Cambrian explosion. An internet search on the subject produced the following quotation from (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/03/4/l_034_02.html):

For most of the nearly 4 billion years that life has existed on Earth, evolution produced little beyond bacteria, plankton, and multi-celled algae. But beginning about 600 million years ago in the Precambrian, the fossil record speaks of more rapid change.

According to his own writings the biggest problem for Darwin with his theory of evolution was the absence, in the fossil record, of transitional forms in the Precambrian period. He hypothesized that it would be just a matter of time before transitional forms were discovered. However in spite of the explosion of knowledge in all areas, a century and a half later this challenge remains. But in any case the command to “Let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures,” and the the Biblical description of the creation of “great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, ...., and every winged bird according to its kind” (verses 20, 21) seems to me to be very far from incompatible with the sudden appearance of these forms of life at this stage of the development of our World.

Coming to day six, the same webpage quoted above records:

Then, between about 570 and 530 million years ago, another burst of diversification occurred, with the eventual appearance of the lineages of almost all animals living today. This stunning and unique evolutionary flowering is termed the "Cambrian explosion," taking the name of the geological age in whose early part it occurred.

And all of this seems to me to be totally consistent with the Biblical record which on “day” six records that “God made the beast of the earth according to its kind, cattle according to its kind, and everything that creeps on the earth according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.” Finally towards the end of this busy day the Bible tells us “Then God said, 'Let Us make man in Our image ...'” (verses 25 and 26).

What I have tried to do in these brief paragraphs is to defuse just one of the so called Science faith issues. These issues are not as black and white as some of our more militant atheists would have us believe. Part of the problem is that neither science nor our understanding of the Bible are complete. Science progresses by two steps forward and one step back. The assured results even of recent decades can look silly today. For example it was not that long ago that we were being told that the earth was trillions if not quadrillions of years old. This was said to be necessary in order for there to be enough time for macro evolution (inter-species change among the more advanced animals) to take place. Today is it widely accepted that the earth Earth’s age is between 4.5 and 4.7 billion years old. This precise estimate comes to us from independent branches of Science. For example one estimate is based on evidence from meteorites and molecular decay rates. Other evidence is based on the observed expansion of the universe and Einstein's theory of relativity.

But if Science has not arrived, neither have we, because we are all biased at some level. The fact is that many of the so called science faith contradictions come from the interpretation of the data rather than the data itself. This of course happens on both sides of the “Faith – Science” divide. My position is that what is true in Science cannot contradict the Bible correctly interpreted. In terms of this post, my view is that what is true in Science describes how God created. A description of the evolution of the automobile engine in no way contradicts the fact that that evolution was guided by intelligent beings. On the other side of the fence our understanding Scripture is far from complete. The difficulties of fully understanding the ancient texts are enormous, and we all bring our biases with us when we read. "Sola Scripture" (Scripture and nothing else) is correct, but no one comes to the Bible without his or her bias. In particular it is always Scripture plus (even if nothing else) my bias. So what I am saying is that we have arrived neither in Science nor our understanding of the Bible! Perhaps a little more humility on both sides is in order!