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Genesis One
The concept of evolution is not at odds with Genesis One,
only the traditional interpretation of the text.
More information on What Science Is, Science vs. Creationism, and Evolution Theory
The story of creation, recorded by Moses, passed down by the Jews to the world. The first chapter of the Bible chronicles the events from the beginning of the universe to the creation of mankind. In it, people are special.
Then along came science. The study of what is and how everything came to be. As knowledge grew, a rift formed between brothers. What is seen in nature is different from what is read from the pulpit. Atheism grew out of theological conflict. It asserts that people are a product of nature, only special because we have large brains and opposable thumbs. Nothing more.
The entire Bible is controversial, Genesis One is no exception. The obvious discordant aspects have been debated for thousands of years, by believers and nonbelievers. Literalists claim a strict traditional interpretation and explain problems away with miracles. Others interpret the story as an allegory, where the elements are symbolic of spiritual things. Most nonbelievers dismiss spiritual inspiration of the text and say it is a simplification of older creation stories, thus a myth.
These factions have faithful followers. Each argument has good points and also big problems. The first group will not accept any evidence that disagrees with the story they were told as a child. Hollywood loves the second group; their stories make scary movies. But adding symbolism on top of the text only masks the original problems and the explanations become mythological not theological. The third group’s claims are very popular. Dismissal of the inspiration of the text permits the dismissal of all the text thereafter. But, their basis of dismissal is faulty. Despite Genesis One being a creation story, it does not read like any other nature myth nor does it have any direct correlation with other stories from the region. It is different.
All three groups proclaim they are on the noble quest for ultimate truth. The first and third groups agree on one thing. If the passage was inspired by God then it must be verifiable by the creation it describes. If it does not describe creation then it’s just another campfire tale.
The literalists have tried for hundreds of years to force nature to comply with their interpretation. Each generation has used current scientific knowledge to produce detailed explanations, filling in incongruity with miracles. But they all tend to leap to conclusions based on tenuous evidence, misrepresent opponents, and omit conflicting data. That is until they can no longer ignore the data and a new “irrefutable” version is presented. For example; in the last 100 years, dinosaurs have gone from being “made by the devil” to having a loving place on Noah’s arc. This is modern mythology not scripture.
The second group drops all pretence of solving the problem logically. No laws of nature need apply.
In science, questions must be solved by logic and upheld by evidence that can be repeated. Theology, and the evidence supporting it, is not repeatable under controlled conditions. Therefore it is not a science and should not be taught as a science. But, for an unbeliever to claim that science proves God does not exist only proves their own faulty logic. The absence of proof is not the proof of absence. Also, science can be wrong. Using a dinosaur example again, scientists proclaimed them to be oversized lizards thus their legs had to sprawl outward. No evidence led them to assume such. They just wanted it to be that way. Huge amounts of data, a few nonconformists, and the use of mass media finely stood dinosaurs upright.
Despite the “Creationists” insistence, nonbelievers do have a valid point that this scripture is not supported by evidence. But what if the traditional explanation is like sprawling dinosaurs. What if the interpretation is at fault and not the passage itself? Can the passage reflect nature?
The arguments against the credibility of Genesis One start with the first three “days” that happen before the sun’s creation. You can’t have days or hours without the sun. That is how they are counted. But according to biblical scholars, current and ancient, the word translated into the English word “day” is not the same word used in any other biblical passage. The true meaning has been lost. For several thousand years, an alternative translation has been posed. It says “long time period,” possibly “a thousand years”. But Literalists refute any translation other than their favorite. How many preachers still use the King James Version? Tradition trumps in the literalist world.
Traditional renditions of this story have things appearing out of nothing, “poof, plants were everywhere, poof, cows ate the plants. But in the passage, God did not wave a magic wand. Nor should we construe that He worked from sun up to sun down then went home at night. Creation took time. Time is implied in every part of the description. Creation was a process that built on events that came before. The apostle Peter understood time as irrelevant to the Creator. 2 Peter 3:8 could have been written “to the Lord one second is as a billion years, and a billion years as a second.” But Peter had no concept of billions or seconds. To him, as to most people, a thousand years is a very long amount of time. Six thousand is huge. Billions are just mind blowing.
Consider the varied audience of Genesis One. Those Bronze and Iron Age people were not stupid, but they had no way of learning any of the macro- or micro-sciences because the tools were not yet available. The passage had to be understandable to them. We in this century have only started to learn the secrets of the creation. The passage must also be understandable to us. In the future, people will know much more about the universe. If inspired, this passage must be verifiable by any nonbeliever; no magic involved.
This passage was not written by the same author as the “Garden of Eden” story. The wording is very different. Nothing in the poem says how things were created, just that they were and who did the creating. This is no epic ballad of good verses evil. It is a simple explanation of whom, what, and where.
Most of all, Genesis One is not a checklist as traditionally read. It is a Hebrew poem and must be read as a poem or you loose the literal meaning. It has two sets of three stanzas. The first three “days” open up spaces in the universe. The second three “days” consecutively fill them.
A non-traditional interpretation of Genesis One
Day 1, Genesis 1:1-5 -- NIV
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. God saw that the light was good and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning-the first day.
The fist line introduces the main character and the poem’s subject, not when heaven and earth were created. How would you depict vacuums and elements to primitive people? To them earth and water is everything. So, the formless Earth is the universe and water is a fluidic void of particles. How eloquent.
I’ve never quite understood the disdain traditionalists have with the “Big Bang” theory. From nothing the smallest of particles suddenly filled the universe and light saturated it. Gravity drew the particles together and more light radiated out into the darkness. The only thing missing is what caused the explosion in the first place. Something that can’t be tested by science.
One of the new astronomical theories is “dark matter,” which is matter that does not radiate light. It may even help clump the “lit matter” together. Sounds like separating light from darkness to me.
There was a beginning and an end to the first era.
Day 2, Genesis 1:6-8 -- NIV
And God said, "Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water." So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. God called the expanse "sky." And there was evening, and there was morning-the second day.
The poet forms spaces out of the void. All of cosmology is compressed into two “days”, from the first atom bonding to the formation of an atmosphere on Earth. Remember: God, Earth, and mankind are the subjects of the poem not the mechanics.
Once again, the water analogy is used. Astrophysics says the earth formed out of a dust cloud rotating around the new sun. It did not have oceans or an atmosphere in the beginning. That took time, collection, and separation.
There was a beginning and an end to the second era.
Day 3, Genesis 1:9-13 -- NIV
And God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear." And it was so. God called the dry ground "land," and the gathered waters he called "seas." And God saw that it was good.
Then God said, "Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds." And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning-the third day.
This passage hints at the geological processes that let continents form. It recognizes that shallow seas surrounding dry land are better than deep oceans for future life to be abundant.
Plants were the first large life form to colonize the world. They start in the shallow seas then moved onto land. Not all kinds of plants are mentioned, only those important to the poet, the rest are grouped as “vegetation”.
If “kind” is translated “lineage” and not “species”, evolution is vindicated. Instead of a magic “poof”, God created a process for continuous creation. Each plant holds its own identity and its own lineage in its DNA, all the way back to the beginning. The more distant the genetics, the less likely crossbreeding will occur, until it can’t.
There was a beginning and an end to the third era.
Day 4, Genesis 1:14-19 -- NIV
And God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth." And it was so. God made two great lights-the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning-the fourth day.
Here the poetic form messes with chronological order. We return to Day 1 to fill the formless universe.
The passage is more concerned with use than astrophysics. I suspect the writer was dumbfounded and had no words to describe the formation of stars and planets. He did understand that most plants and animals are guided by day, night, and the seasons. Humans are no exception.
There was a beginning and an end to the forth era.
Day 5, Genesis 1: 20-23 -- NIV
And God said, "Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky." So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them and said, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth." And there was evening, and there was morning-the fifth day.
The poet fills the early ocean and sky created on Day 2. Paleontology data claims that before any animal lived on land, the seas and oceans thrived. The passage describes a very large group as “sea creatures.” It does not differentiate between fish, whale, coral, or crustacean. It includes all that are living and all that no longer exist.
Birds are placed here along with the sea creatures. According to the fossil record the placement is wrong. They should arrive after creeping animals. But if interpreted as a group like the “sea creatures”, the passage works. Fossil evidence shows birds to be dinosaurs which are one of the first forms derived from the first tetrapods, they constitute a major group that once dominated the world and now rule the air. The placement of birds gives homage to a world humans did not know until very recently.
Each sea animal and each bird holds its own identity and its own lineage in its DNA.
There was a beginning and an end to the fifth era.
Day 6, Genesis 1:24-31 -- NIV
And God said, "Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind." And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.
Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."
Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground-everything that has the breath of life in it-I give every green plant for food." And it was so.
God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning-the sixth day.
The dry land created on Day 3 is filled. All other land animals appear in a rush of creation. Again, if “kind” is not translated “species”, the fossils record supports this. The lineages of all the land animals we know start at nearly the same time.
Humans are specific, not generalized. Primates are one of the last creatures to develop and we came out of a long line of mammal ancestors. We humans dominate the world and the other life forms in it. Like the Creator, this one species has the intellect to appreciate the creation and acknowledge the Creator.
Each animal and each human holds its own identity and its own lineage in its DNA.
There was a beginning and an end to the sixth era.
Day 7, Genesis 2:1-3 -- NIV
Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.
This is a conclusion statement and a promise for the future. God takes a break. This does not mean he stopped the processes he started. This does not mean he stopped meddling. He takes a break to watch His prized creation. The Jewish people were given a day to rest and contemplate their Creator.
Conclusion
No mythological creation story comes close to describing the incredible scientific discoveries of the last century. Our lives have changed. Our planet is no longer our universe or the only one in the universe. We can fly with the birds and swim with the deep fishes. The beginning of time can be seen.
But four thousand years ago, a poet wrote Genesis One. It describes the processes that formed the universe. There is almost no embellishment, and if read as a poem is in surprisingly correct order. It says God loved the process and the creation. It says humans are both a product of nature and a special creature in the universe.
He watches and waits for us to acknowledge Him as our Creator.
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