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!