Genesis & Earth Science

Introduction

One of the biggest attacks against the Bible is criticism of Genesis. Most argue that it goes against established science, be it adherence to macroevolution, or merely trying to find fault with the order or length of Genesis. Therefore, because Genesis is seen as inaccurate according to measurable reality, then “it can’t be inspired of God” and everything else in relation to it also therefore is untrustworthy… including the history of Adam and Eve, the genetic family line from Adam to Yeshua, and the very reasons we needed the Anointed One to redeem us from the sin of the first man in the first place.

The main arguments against Genesis presented (besides the belief in ancestral macroevolution) are things such as the appearances of certain universal elements, such as the “luminaries” (the Sun and Moon) being placed in the sky after the Earth’s creation, the time of the appearance of land, grass and trees, the statement that birds came before land animals, and of course the age of the Earth itself, being that on plain surface reading of our modern English translations it seems this account tells that the Earth was created in a timespan of a literal week. 

However, I feel such a literal, simplistic rendering of these details is doing the creation account a disservice as I find it’s full of details which are remarkably similar to the current stances of secular Earth science, and that by reading into the original Hebrew texts, there is in fact generous room for accurate interpretation in accordance to science as we know it today.

The Creation Account

Before moving further to examine and discuss Genesis in detail, however, we should read and examine for ourselves the entire Genesis creation account:

• “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  Now the earth was formless and desolate, and there was darkness upon the surface of the watery deep, and God’s active force was moving about over the surface of the waters. And God said: “Let there be light.” Then there was light.  After that God saw that the light was good, and God began to divide the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, but the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, a first day.
  
  Then God said: “Let there be an expanse between the waters, and let there be a division between the waters and the waters.” Then God went on to make the expanse and divided the waters beneath the expanse from the waters above the expanse. And it was so. God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.
  
  Then God said: “Let the waters under the heavens be collected together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, but the collecting of the waters, he called Seas. And God saw that it was good…. 
  
  No bush of the field was yet on the earth and no vegetation of the field had begun sprouting, because YHWH God had not made it rain on the earth and there was no man to cultivate the ground. But a mist would go up from the earth, and it watered the entire surface of the ground. Then God said: “Let the earth cause grass to sprout, seed-bearing plants and fruit trees according to their kinds, yielding fruit along with seed on the earth.” And it was so.  And the earth began to produce grass, seed-bearing plants and trees yielding fruit along with seed, according to their kinds. Then God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a third day.  
  
  Then God said: “Let there be luminaries in the expanse of the heavens to make a division between the day and the night, and they will serve as signs for seasons and for days and years. They will serve as luminaries in the expanse of the heavens to shine upon the earth.” And it was so. And God went on to make the two great luminaries, the greater luminary for dominating the day and the lesser luminary for dominating the night, and also the stars. Thus, God put them in the expanse of the heavens to shine upon the earth and to dominate by day and by night and to make a division between the light and the darkness. Then God saw that it was good.  And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.  
  
  Then God said: “Let the waters swarm with living creatures, and let flying creatures fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” And God created the great sea creatures and all living creatures that move and swarm in the waters according to their kinds and every winged flying creature according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. With that God blessed them, saying: “Be fruitful and become many and fill the waters of the sea, and let the flying creatures become many in the earth.”  And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.
  
  Then God said: “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds, domestic animals and creeping animals and wild animals of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. And God went on to make the wild animals of the earth according to their kinds and the domestic animals according to their kinds and all the creeping animals of the ground according to their kinds… And out of the ground YHWH God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air… And God saw that it was good.  
  
  Then God said: “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have in subjection the fish of the sea and the flying creatures of the heavens and the domestic animals and all the earth and every creeping animal that is moving on the earth.” And God went on to create the man in his image… And YHWH God went on to form the man out of dust from the ground and to blow into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. 
  
  …and He (God) brought them (birds and land animals) to the man to see what he would name each one… So the man named all the domestic animals and the flying creatures of the heavens and every wild animal of the field, but for man there was no helper as a complement of him. So YHWH God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep, and while he was sleeping, he took his one side and then closed up the flesh over its place. And YHWH God built from the side that he had taken from the man into a woman, and he brought her to the man….  male and female he created them. Further, God blessed them, and God said to them: “Be fruitful and become many, fill the earth and subdue it, and have in subjection the fish of the sea and the flying creatures of the heavens and every living creature that is moving on the earth.” Then God said: “Here I have given to you every seed-bearing plant that is on the entire earth and every tree with seed-bearing fruit. Let them serve as food for you. And to every wild animal of the earth and to every flying creature of the heavens and to everything moving on the earth in which there is life, I have given all green vegetation for food.” And it was so. After that God saw everything he had made, and look! it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, a sixth day. 
  
  Thus, the heavens and the earth and everything in them were completed. And by the seventh day, God had completed the work that he had been doing, and he began to rest on the seventh day from all his work that he had been doing. And God went on to bless the seventh day and to declare it sacred, for on it God has been resting from all the work that he has created, all that he purposed to make. This is a history of the heavens and the earth in the time they were created, in the generations that YHWH God made earth and heavens”. – Genesis 1:1-31, 2:1-7, 19-22 (Chronologically Arranged)

This here is the written Genesis account in its entirety. If familiar with Genesis, you may have noticed the way I wrote the account here looks slightly different from how it is traditionally read directly from the Bible. This is because both Genesis 1 and 2 are here, in chronological arrangement (in accordance to the Bible’s chronology, in case anyone thinks I meant “arranged in accordance to secular science”).

Many forget or look past the fact that Genesis chapter 2 is a shortened thematic and spiritual retelling of the creation account of Genesis 1, focused mainly upon the finer details of the creation of the first humans and their interactions with the world in Eden. However, for this context, it is important that all the key elements and descriptions of the creation events be put in place as a “complete structure”, as it tells very important key details for understanding the account.

The account breaks up creation into “six to seven days”. Of course, whether these days are literal 24-hour days is another matter to address. However, before getting into such details we should gloss over the main points of the account, the events of creation and the order they are presented to us:

1. Heavens (space and stars) created
2. Desolate Earth created and is filled with water
3. Light appointed to shine upon the Earth and is divided into day and night (Day 1)
4. Separation of waters between the surface and sky (Day 2)
5. Formation of seas and dry land (Day 3)
6. Mist of vapour covered the Earth (no rain) (Day 3)
7. Grass, plants and trees begin to grow (Day 3)
8. Sun and Moon made to be signs in the sky for day, night and seasons (Day 4)
9. Sea creatures created (Day 5)
10. Creatures that move in the waters created (Day 5)
11. Birds created (Day 5)
12. Land animals created (Day 6)
13. Man and Woman created (Day 6)

Now we have a clear surface understanding of what the Bible teaches, we need to examine the claims of secular Earth science, and then compare them side by side.

Secular Earth Science

Earth science is broken up into many divisions. Cosmology, geology and evolution are the three main subjects when it comes to trying to understand the timeline of life as we know it and the origins of everything we know. The Big Bang, the formation of the Earth and the appearance of life.

At a glance this is the secular timeline of life as we know it:

(Image Credit: Wikipedia, Timeline of the evolutionary history of life, Geologic time scale)

From mere plain surface observation of these diagrams, it looks as if to claim that first came the Universe, the Sun, Earth, Moon, water, life, atmospheric change, plant life, sea life, dinosaurs (be they birds, or reptiles, more on that subject later), and then mammal life.

If we compare this surface diagram to the Bible’s story, we see both many similarities, but also some significant differences. These being some of the ones I mentioned earlier. Of course, just as it is with the Bible, there are deeper details we need to look into to fully understand the scientific position beyond a mere surface evaluation.

According to the Timeline of the evolutionary history of life article on Wikipedia, the history of the Earth, and its major lifeforms following the birth of the universe is as follows:

(Note that I will be focusing on the major first appearances of life’s main classifications, e.g; cells, sea life, land life, cold-blooded, warm-blooded, avian, non-avian, plants and insects. I will not be focusing on the minute details of species diversification and adaptations over time ‘within’ the aforementioned classifications, e.g; the appearance of a new species of fish, amphibian, reptile, mammal or tree, long after it has been established that such groups have come into mass or general existence. Nor will I be making mention of any extinction events, though this does not mean that I deny either of them. For the full depth of timeline detail, please refer to the link provided to be assured that I make no alterations or dishonest rearrangements of the following details. I shall also be inserting [footnotes] to provide explanations of certain terms for the reader).

“Ma (for megaannum) means “million years ago,” ka (for kiloannum) means “thousand years ago.

4600-4500 Ma the planet Earth forms from the accretion disc revolving around the young Sun… According to the giant impact hypothesis, the Moon originated when the planet Earth and the hypothesized planet Theia collided…

4400 Ma, first appearance of liquid water on Earth….

4280 Ma, earliest possible appearance of life [cell organisms] on Earth. 4000 Ma, formation of a greenstone belt of the Acasta Gneiss of the Slave craton in Northwest Territories. 4100–3800 Ma Late heavy Bombardment (LHB): extended barrage by meteoroids resulting in impact events upon the inner planets. Thermal flux from widespread hydrothermal activity during the LHB may have been conducive to abiogenesis and life’s early diversification. “Remains of biotic life” were found in 4.1 billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia. This is when life [cell organisms] most likely arose.

3900–2500 Ma, cells resembling prokaryotes appear. These first organisms are believed to have been chemoautotrophs: they use carbon dioxide as a carbon source and oxidize inorganic materials to extract energy. 3800 Ma Formation of a greenstone belt of the Isua complex of the western Greenland region, whose rocks show an isotope frequency suggestive of the presence of life. The earliest evidences for life on Earth are 3.8 billion-year-old biogenic hematite in a banded iron formation of the Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt in Canada, graphite in 3.7 billion-year-old metasedimentary rocks discovered in western Greenland and microbial mat fossils found in 3.48 billion-year-old sandstone discovered in Western Australia.

3500 Ma Lifetime of the last universal common ancestor (LUCA); the split between bacteria and archaea occurs. Bacteria develop primitive forms of photosynthesis which at first did not produce oxygen…

3200 Ma, diversification and expansion of acritarchs [cell organisms]. 3000 Ma photosynthesizing cyanobacteria evolve; they use water as a reducing agent, thereby producing oxygen as a waste product. The oxygen initially oxidizes dissolved iron in the oceans, creating iron ore. The oxygen concentration in the atmosphere slowly rises, acting as a poison for many bacteria and eventually triggering the Great Oxygenation Event.

2800 Ma, oldest evidence for microbial life [cells] on land in the form of organic matter-rich paleosols, ephemeral ponds and alluvial sequences, some of them bearing microfossils.

2500 Ma, great Oxidation Event led by cyanobacteria’s oxygenic photosynthesis. Commencement of plate tectonics with old marine crust dense enough to subduct. By 1850 Ma Eukaryotic cells appear…. Bacterial viruses (bacteriophage) emerge before, or soon after, the divergence of the prokaryotic and eukaryotic lineages. The appearance of red beds show that an oxidising atmosphere had been produced. Incentives now favoured the spread of eukaryotic [cell] life.

1400 Ma, great increase in stromatolite diversity. 1300 Ma, earliest land fungi. By 1200 Ma Meiosis and sexual reproduction are present in single-celled eukaryotes, and possibly in the common ancestor of all eukaryotes. Sex may even have arisen earlier in the RNA world. Sexual reproduction [in cells] first appears in the fossil records; it may have increased the rate of evolution. 1000 Ma the first non-marine eukaryotes move onto land. They were photosynthetic and multicellular, indicating that plants evolved much earlier than originally thought.

750 Ma First protozoa (ex: Melanocyrillium) [cells]; beginning of animal evolution.

850–630 Ma, a global glaciation may have occurred…. It is believed that this was due to evolution of the first land plants, which increased the amount of oxygen and lowered the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. 600 Ma, the accumulation of atmospheric oxygen allows the formation of an ozone layer Prior to this, land-based life would probably have required other chemicals to attenuate ultraviolet radiation enough to permit colonisation of the land.

580–542 Ma, the Ediacara biota represent the first large, complex aquatic multicellular organisms — although their affinities remain a subject of debate. 580–500 Ma most modern phyla of animals [in the sea] begin to appear in the fossil record during the Cambrian explosion. 550 Ma first fossil evidence for Ctenophora (comb jellies), Porifera (sponges), Anthozoa (corals and sea anemones). Appearance of Ikaria wariootia (an early Bilaterian)…. The first known footprints [possibly from euthycarcinoidea, crustaceans or insects] on land date to 530 Ma.

395 Ma… Earliest harvestmen, mites, hexapods (springtails) [insects & bugs] and ammonoids [molluscs]. The first known tetrapod [four-limbed animal, likely amphibian or reptile] tracks on land…. 365 Ma Acanthostega [limbed amphibian] is one of the earliest vertebrates capable of walking. 363 Ma… the Earth begins to resemble its present state. Insects roamed the land and would soon take to the skies; sharks swam the oceans as top predators, and vegetation covered the land, with seed-bearing plants and forests soon to flourish. Four-limbed tetrapods [four legged amphibians and reptiles] gradually gain adaptations which will help them occupy a terrestrial life-habit.

320 Ma Synapsids (precursors to mammals) separate from sauropsids (reptiles) in late Carboniferous. 305 Ma earliest diapsid reptiles (e.g. Petrolacosaurus)… 280 Ma earliest beetles, seed plants and conifers diversify while lepidodendrids and sphenopsids decrease… 275 Ma Therapsid [mammal-like reptiles?] synapsids separate from pelycosaur synapsids. 270 Ma Gorgonopsians [Saber-toothed reptiles/or early mammals?] appear in the fossil record…

225 Ma earliest dinosaurs (prosauropods) [long-necked bipedal herbivorous bird-like dinosaurs]… First mammals (Adelobasileus). 220 Ma Seed-producing Gymnosperm forests dominate the land; herbivores grow to huge sizes to accommodate the large guts necessary to digest the nutrient-poor plants. First flies and turtles (Odontochelys). First coelophysoid [shorter-necked bipedal carnivorous bird-like] dinosaurs.

200 Ma …Earliest examples of armoured dinosaurs [thick-hided quadrupedal]. 195 Ma First pterosaurs [flying reptile/bird(?) dinosaurs] with specialized feeding (Dorygnathus). First sauropod [long-necked quadrupedal] dinosaurs. Diversification in small, ornithischian [herbivorous quadrupedal] dinosaurs…

170 Ma Earliest… cladotherian mammals…. 163 Ma Pterodactyloid pterosaurs [Flying reptiles/birds(?)] first appear.

155 Ma First blood-sucking insects… Archaeopteryx, a possible ancestor to the birds, appears in the fossil record, along with triconodontid and symmetrodont mammals.…

60 Ma …Earliest true primates…. 50 Ma…diversification of primates [Apes, Monkeys and Prosimians]…

2 Ma First members of the genus Homo, Homo Habilis [ape/early human debated], appear in the fossil record… 1.2 Ma Evolution of Homo antecessor [ape/early human debated].

600 ka Evolution of Homo heidelbergensis [ape/early human debated].

350 ka Evolution of Neanderthals [early humans/sub-humans]…. 250 ka anatomically modern humans appear in Africa. Around 50,000 years before present they start colonising the other continents, replacing the Neanderthals in Europe and other hominins in Asia.

10 ka The Holocene epoch starts 10,000 years ago after the Late Glacial Maximum”.

Here we see the entire timeline of the secular understanding of the appearance of life. From the first appearances, multiple variations and species of life forms also evolve over time from the initial appearances of specific taxons (or kinds of organic creature).

The secular order of life can be broke down into a simple list as such:

1. Space and stars form
2. Formation of the sun
3. Formation of the Earth
4. Formation of the Moon (?)
5. Water on Earth appears
6. Cells appear
7. First oxygenation event
8. Earliest plant life
9. Global glaciation (?)
10. Second oxygenation event & Ozone layer forms
11. Sea creatures appear (Cambrian explosion)
12. Bugs and insects appear
13. Amphibians appear and walk on land
14. Reptiles appear
15. Avian-Dinosaurs appear
16. Quadrupedal Dinosaurs appear
17. Flying creatures appear
18. Mammals appear
19. Humans appear

Above, we see the simple order of life as scientists currently portray to us, based on their findings. From each major appearance of life, other life forms are said to mutate, adapt and evolve, giving way to variation (microevolution), until eventually evolving into something else entirely (macroevolution). Thus, the creatures of the above list are thought to be the genetic descendants of those who came before them.

Surface Comparisons & Contradictions

If we take our above lists and compare them side by side at face value, we come to see a great many deal of similarities, but also contradictions…

In the above diagram, green indicates the events that can be said to match up to certain events and appear to match the chronological order of secularism, blue indicates neutrality, in that there is either an absence or ambiguity of that mention of said thing in the Bible record, and red infers a contradiction.

As we can see, the apparent contradictions based upon shallow surface reading of the scriptures as they are presented to us in our modern Bible translations, cause us some problems, and in reaction, there are several “solutions”.

Atheism or Non-Inspiration

For a person taking for granted the basic surface translation contained in the book within their hands, such people conclude it to be nonsense, cease there and move on.

Their objections are raised that because “the Bible teaches birds came before land animals, the sun and moon came after the Earth, and all were made in six literal days”, it’s therefore “not inspired of God” and that we should just move on from this account and consider it a mythological fairytale that debunks the Bible.

Of course, this for several reasons is a very heavy-handed view, and doesn’t take time to consider the feasible alternatives and uncharitably condemns the Bible as a whole.

Conspiratorial Thinking & Rejection of all Science

For believers in the faith, these scriptures also can pose problems, inducing doubt, fear, or in some extreme cases, whacky conspiracy theories, where Christians will accuse all science to be fake, and scientists to be paid actors, which then carries them off down a spiral of ongoing crazy theories and pseudosciences (such as flat-earthism, faked moon landings, space-mythicism, NASA-Illuminatism, etc).

However, this approach only serves to distract them from what is important in the faith, and furthermore, embarrasses and damages the Christian faith as a whole in the eyes of onlookers.

Others meanwhile taking this line of approach do not completely go all out on their conspiratorial thinking, but will still claim that Genesis must be taken hyper-literal, and that the Earth is young (between 10,000-7000 years old), and that current scientific models of interpretation are either biased or flawed – something of course I do believe we should have an ‘open mind’ toward if the evidence of such a thing can be presented.

A lot of the time however, this approach is often mocked, both by other Christian believers, and very much so by scientists who strongly assert that their science is correct and demonstrably provable with hard facts.

Fully Poetic Interpretation

Other believers will completely accept all secular science, some even adopting belief systems such as theistic-evolution (that God used macro-evolution as his means of creation over billions of years), and thus opt for alternative interpretations of scripture, such as a fully “symbolic or poetic Genesis”, where they believe that the “point” of Genesis is simply to tell its readers that God made everything, but not to read it as a “literal historical textbook account” of how it all happened.

Of course, with this latter view, it opens the door to “Biblical-mythicism”, where any and all Bible accounts could very well be taken to be “well intentioned stories and myths” from God to teach mankind spiritual lessons, but then as a result risks to undermine the entire validity for the existence of God, or the even idea that Yeshua (Jesus) himself was wrong, for even he and his Apostles seemed to have taught Genesis to be real and literal history, consisting of a real Adam, Eve and Noah’s Flood, such things even playing important theologial roles in the Gospel (Matthew 24:37-39, 1 Corinthians 15:45, Romans 5:12, 1 Timothy 2:13-14).

It thus becomes difficult in this respect to argue where one should draw the line between “intentional myth” and genuine history from the biblical authors, if taking such an approach.

A Dualistic & Concordist Interpretation

If we’re not to be athiests and believe the Bible is God’s word to humanity, then simply casting Genesis 1 off to be all unbelievable nonsense isn’t an option for us, especially since the later Christian writers and even Yeshua himself advocated Genesis as to be authentic God-given canon, whether or not it should be interpreted as “just a story for moral teaching”.

But to ‘completely’ write off the creation account in Genesis as “just a story” to tell people God created the Universe and nothing more, even as believers, are we to then believe Adam, Eve, Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, and so on, are all also, just “stories” to teach us God’s ways? – Even most Christians who take the utmost allegorical view of Genesis 1, wouldn’t subscribe to such a notion, but hold these figures to be real historical people all playing important roles in the progression of the biblical story, so we end up operating upon double standards.

However, whilst all seems lost, and seemingly we are forced into trying to pit one origin theory against another, with scientific evidence that arguably seems to (in my opinion) outweigh the support onto the side of old-earth secularism rather than a literal young-earth Genesis as we plainly read it, things may not be so opposed as they would seem on the surface.

Though I do believe that the Bible should be understood in its historical contexts and genres, and that it was not written with the intent to be a scientific textbook for its ancient audience, but rather had a focus on spirituality, morality, theology, and general world history, all which are often explained by means of many songs, poems, and parables in accordance to the common world views and cultures of the ancient people for the sake of their own understanding; I also believe that since God is an all knowing and all foreseeing God, that was he also capable of having inspired the authors to have written down certain concealed details of creation interwoven in these writings, that possibly would not have been fully appreciated or understood by the original ancient audience.

• “It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out”. – Proverbs 25:2

In this respect, I believe by divine providence, that the Bible’s creative accounts may be speaking to several audiences at once. Firstly and predominantly, the ancient audience who understood these things in a more basic or “primitive” interpretation, which was suited to their culture and times. But also to us concerning the details of our modern scientific understanding of the world, details that can only be appreciated upon full revelation or discovery.

This view that I consider here, is what it known as “Concordism”, which is the notion that genuine science and the Bible can actually compliment each other, and not be at odds. That if the two seem to clash, then it is either:

1. The science that is somehow ‘flawed’ and in need of correcting, of which we should seek out genuine evidence for.

2. That it’s our understanding of the Bible that is flawed, and needs to be adjusted in light of scientific revelation, where the text allows for it.

Something to point out in our earlier surface comparisons between the current secular scientific worldview and the texts of Genesis, are not merely the differences, but all the similarities.

There appears to be a general or “close resemblance” going on in many places, and more than can be said for any other creation story from any other ancient religion in the world. We see for example the universe coming into a primordial existence suddenly from nothing, then the Earth, the sea, life in the sea, on land, then ending at humanity. Why, there are amazingly even what appears to be two atmospheric events being mentioned in scripture, which may be the very same oxygenation and ozone events proposed by modern secular scientists.

Therefore, it stands to say, if just by surface reading alone, that there are a generous amount of threads which can be considered extremely close to “truth” (based on the standards of secular evidence and current scientific views to be defined as that “truth”) here, perhaps there is more than meets the eye to Genesis, and we need to do more digging into this account, and not settle for what is being presented to us in modern day English translation, but to see if “like kings”, we can go about in “seeking out the matters” that God may have “concealed” in these words.

Let’s will investigate both the scriptures and the science more closely, to see if we might find more connections between them than meets the eye.

A Closer Look at the Biblical Account

The Sun, Moon & Stars

To take a closer look at the account, we should go first directly to the first and most glaring verse of contention on our list, that is the creation of the sun and moon at Genesis 1:14–16.

There are two approaches we can deal with this.

Literal young-earth creationists will try to claim the sun and moon indeed were created after Earth and plant life, contrary to the current consensus of scientific evidences we have which appears to confirm or at least claim otherwise. Alternatively, there might be details in the account that Genesis is not actually claiming the sun and stars were created after the Earth. We will consider both options and explore them.

Old Earth Interpretation Arguments

Beginning with the the assumption that THE secular science is correct regarding the age and the order of how the Solar System and Earth came about, we should look to Genesis closer textually, to see if there is anything there that might support such a model, and argue against the young-earth creationist reading.


“Created (Bara)” vs “Made (Asah)“

Many would be surprised to learn, that if we actually focus on the words used in the passages concerning creation, its quite possible to argue that the account doesn’t actually say the sun and moon were “created” on the fourth day, but rather, only were to said be made as “signs in the sky for signs and seasons”.

This may be a minor thing to most readers, but it’s important to note that it’s very easy to overlook the subtle wordplay in these verses, especially if we are looking at “made” versus “created”. However, an examination of the original Hebrew is very revealing to why the sun and moon might be attributed the word “made” but not “created” in this passage.

In the accounts where YHWH God created something from scratch, the Hebrew term “bara” is often used. The term often meaning to “cause something to come into existence from nothing”, though it can also be a synonym of when something is created from an existing material too.

However, when the luminaries of night, day and seasons were mentioned to appear, the term “asah” is used in ‘absense’ of “bara”.

This term does not mean to make from scratch, but rather, to “make something happen with an existing material”, to “make or form” something “from a material” (more readily so when it’s combined with “bara”), for “one thing to produce another”, or to “appoint something” and has most of the time been used throughout the Hebrew scriptures in such a context.

For example, at 2 Samuel 7:11, God speaks of setting up judges in Israel from existing men, as opposed to the judges literally being created out of thin air, the same word, “asah” is used. They were “made to be” something.

“bara’ בָּרָא
Definition: to shape, create, (absolutely) to create; (qualified) to cut down (a wood), select, feed (as formative processes) — choose, create (creator), cut down, dispatch, do, make (fat)” – Strong’s Concordance & Exhaustive Concordance

“asah עָשָׂה
Definition: do, make, accomplish, advance, appoint, apt, be at, become, bear, bestow, to do or make in the broadest sense and widest application” – Strong’s Concordance & Exhaustive Concordance

So, why is this term not necessarily being considered to be a literal creation statement, just with an alternative word? “Make” can be used in place of “create” can’t it?

Possibly yes, we do see for example at the end of Genesis 1, God looked upon all the things he had “made” (asah), and we also see this term used throughout the text to refer to some acts of creation, when paired with “bara”, for example, humans are “created” (bara) by God when had “formed” (yatsar) and “made” (asah) them from the “dust of the ground” (Genesis 1:26-27).

But it’s not as simple as that to thus apply a single broad definition of use of the word in the text.

For example, in the entire Genesis text, whilst most creation acts make use the term “bara” to refer to their creation either with or without the accompaniment of “asah”, the origin of animals are described with “asah” ‘without’ any accompaniment of “bara”, and so likewise does the formation of the “firmament” or “sky expanse” via the division of the waters, which is quite interesting:

One could argue that “make” (asah) is being used as an alternative phrase for “create” (bara) here for the luminaries, since we see the word used in regard to appearance of the land animals and humans. However, it is also possible that this verse means God used something already existing to create the animals (such as genetic material from other creations, earthly substances, or evolution, etc).

However, a clear answer appears to be provided to us twice, once where we see that then the firmament was “made” (asah), it was done by seperating the pre-existing waters (Genesis 1:7). Again in Genesis 1:24 and Genesis 2:19, where we are told God commands the “earth itself” to “bring forth” all the animals, and that he “forms” (yatsar) the animals from the “ground”.

So we have a reference in Genesis which tells us the origin and method God uses to create both the land animals and the watery firmament, possibly explaining ‘why’ the term “asah” is used even without the word “bara” in Genesis 1, for the the firmament and land animals appear to be made from a pre-existing material source, so these ‘descriptions’ fill in the place of our “bara synonyms”.

The pattern we see is that only time “asah” is used in the creation account, is when God is creating or making something via using something else that already exists to use, of which is usually explained in one manner or another, be it through the ‘description’ of the act, or its combination with the word “bara”, that he “creates” (bara) these things by ‘means’ of “making” (asah) and “forming” (yatsar) them with existing material.

However, whilst we see several acts of creation making use of “asah”, what we never see is the statement that the sun and moon were literally “made” (asah), “formed” (yatsar) or “created” (bara) at any point during these passages, whether from an existing material or other kind of formation. We are never given any kind of description of how the act was done, and so we are absent of any “bara” synonym.

In this respect, it’s possible that account has them simply already being ‘there’ without any explanation as to where they came from, but were only given an “appointed role” ie; “made to be something”, just like the waters that were already in existence were used in part to make the firmament simply by seperation and movement. This then may lend to the idea that the sun and moon were in fact “already existing”, and that their “appointment” was related to visibility in the sky from a human perception, rather than their actual creation.

But do we have any proof of this in scripture? Or is it a desperate assertion of subjective interpretation to merely try and defend the Bible from its “scientific errors”? Is this all just one big stretch? Indeed I even ask ‘myself’ that. But it’s worth looking furthermore at the consistency of the narrative.

Narrative Clues for a Pre-Existent Sun

Examing the linguistics of Genesis is not the only line of reason we might argue for the notion that the sun wasn’t literally created on the fourth day after the Earth. But there are also narrative clues in the passage that might reveal such to us.

It is worth noting, the beginning of Genesis states the “heavens” (typically understood to be the sky, stars and celestial objects by Biblical definition) were made first. Following this, the Earth was created, but it was dark “upon the face of the deep” that is, the surface of the planet. Suddenly, “light” was “shining” upon the Earth, of which was said to define “night and day” (Genesis 1:1,3-5).

Where was this “light” that we see shining before day 1 of the following creation week coming from? And why is it defining the night and day? Sounds a lot like the sun, stars and moon, doesn’t it? And so perhaps that’s just what this is.

But do we have any more evidence that this “light” came from the sun? Yes, for in Hebrew the word for light used is “ōwr”, which has been used also to refer to the sun in various passages, such as Job 31:26, and the notion that light originates from the sun is expressed throughout the rest of Bible (Isaiah 60:19).

“Or:
broad (1), dawn (1), dawn* (1), daylight (1), daylight* (1), early morning (1), light (105), lightning (5), lights (2), sun (1), sunlight (1), sunshine (1)” – NAS Exhaustive Concordance“

Furthermore, we are clearly told “morning and evening” existed before the later fourth creational day which speaks of the sun and moon being made or appointed as “signs” for night, day, and seasons. We could reason then, that the first act of creation, that is, the creation of the heavenly bodies, included the sun, of which provided light to the planet, for nowhere else are the sun, moon and stars ever said to have been created (bara) separately, or made (asah) from some other material as per the typical pattern of the account.

The Genesis authors were not stupid, and so we should not be so unchartiable to assert that they believed daylight didn’t come from the sun. They knew well enough that the sun was the origin of daylight, and was what defined day and night.

If the definition of the word “heavens” also precludes to the celestial objects, as it typically does in Hebrew literature, it would also make little sense for the Bible writers to mention the stars being “created twice”, if they are being mentioned ‘both’ in the first day (the heavens) and the fourth day.

It’s also important to take note of the ‘purpose’ of the mentioning of the forth day, which is predominantly focused on the luminaries to be used as “signs”. Therefore, if the stars being “appointed” or “made” as signs on the fourth day is not the day of their “creation”, then we have a strong case for claiming the same when it comes to the sun and moon.

Such a notion makes perfect sense also from the historical contextual view. When one thinks of what they typically first see in the morning, it’s the daylight, but we don’t see the sunrise itself as an object in the sky until a little later.

Hence, the writer may be describing things from such a perspective, that just because we have ‘light’ doesn’t preclude that the sun can yet be seen. Ancient Hebrews were an agricultural people, and placed much empthasis on the sun and moon as signs to tell them what time of year and day it was. Hence, ‘light’ comes first, then the waiting upon the “luminary sign”.

This detail, for the context of ‘their day’ would have been appropriate in understanding that God made all the things and proccesses that ‘they’ placed focus on in their lives. God’s creative acts being compared to that of a farmer who gets up early in the morning, awaits for the light of day to appear, and then goes out to work in his field to plant or reap his crops before the hot sunrise – but this doesn’t merely need to be limited to the ancient observational context, but also might apply in a higher scientific view for our understanding, concerning the Earth’s early atmosphere and the visibility of the luminaries.

Finally to add, this understanding can also be backed up by how the language of Genesis is used by later prophets in the Bible such as Jeremiah, when he spoke of the desolation of Judah:

• “I looked at the earth (or land), and it was formless and void; I looked to the heavens (or sky), and they had no light. I looked at the mountains, and behold, they were quaking; all the hills were swaying. I looked, and no man was left; all the birds of the air had fled. I looked, and the fruitful land was a desert. All its cities were torn down before YHWH, before His fierce anger. For this is what YHWH says: ‘The whole land [of Judah] will be desolate, but I will not finish its destruction. Therefore the earth (or land) will mourn and the heavens (or sky) above will grow dark. I have spoken, I have planned, and I will not relent or turn back'”. – Jeremiah 4:23-28

We see here, Jeremiah speaks of a prophetic warning from God of Israel’s punishment, where he makes it desolate and barren, and also mentions taking away its light. And yet despite this, we know it is not saying God was literally removing or destroying the sun and moon, or that he was removing light from the whole Earth, but only that Israel would no longer recieve their divine blessings or benefits concerning good seasons, harvests, weather conditions, and so on – the sun, moon, light, and plants of the Earth as a whole would all remain for everyone else. This clearly doesn’t mean that each nation has their own seperate light sources or luminaries in the sky.

So we see in the way Jeremiah makes a reference to the language of Genesis 1, reversing the roles into a destructive rather than creative context, gives us an idea of how the ancient Hebrews themselves understood the account, and that it supports the notion of an “appointing” or “blessing” of what was already there, for a specific context concerning his creations and people.

Why was the Earth Dark?

Another question we have to ask of course is; Why was there darkness upon the surface of the Earth in the beginning before “light” came upon it at Genesis 1:2-3?

Does it say there then that the sun was made after Earth but before the land and plants? Not necessarily, for if the “the heavens” are the only logical source of what was providing the very light that “divides night and day”, and was said to have came first before anything else (Genesis 1:1), it can be argued that the answer then, is that for some reason, light was not penetrating Earth’s atmosphere at all, until later, and that the writer is describing things from ‘his’ point of view looking up to the sky.

From the ancient farmer narrative perspective of events, the land exists before light begins to shine and the farmer gets to work.

From a scientific view, according to some scientists, the early atmosphere of the Earth was much thicker, darker, and cloudy. If so, then this would potentially explain the initial lack of light. When God did finally allow or cause light to penetrate to the Earth, this of course still did not render the sun, moon and stars visible in the sky, that would still come later after further atmospheric changes (“day 4”).

Some argue that this is in fact supported verbatim in the Bible at Job 38:9, where God states in regard to Earth’s early stages of creation;

• “I made the clouds its garment and thick darkness its blanket“.

The scriptures may appear to state that after the initial creation event and the casting of light upon Earth, the sky was still full of a thick, wet and misty atmosphere before plant life was created (Genesis 1:6, 2:6), which may imply that the sky was constantly overcast for anything that was living on the Earth at that time before that moment, but not so overcast that no light at all was getting through (in other words, it was constantly like living here in Britain).  

Hence, it can be argued that the sun, moon and stars were clearly already there from the beginning from the very first verse of creation, and their light was enough to have visibility upon the Earth, but the luminaries themselves could not be distinctly seen until that moment God decreed to be so, and hence, they became “appointed/made (asah) as signs in the skies”.

A fascinating video below explains, in under 6 minutes (beginning from 5:58), the secular model on the history of the development of Earth’s atmosphere. If we compare this to the Genesis atmospheric events, we can see remarkable similarity to the details we’ve covered thus far which may appear to be contained in the Hebrew texts. 

The History of Earth’s Atmosphere by The Helpful Chemist

Young Earth & Literal Interpretation Arguments

The young earth interpretation would explain things rather differently, and would simply hold to the notion that science it making incorrect assumptions, and that the sun and stars indeed were literally made on day four, and that the light was just something of a miracle for the sake of God getting to work on the Earth.

Others meanwhile, have an old-earth view of Genesis, but still adhere to the notion of the traditional ‘sequence’ of events based on the surface reading, and would assert that the Earth predates the sun by millions of years.

Interestingly however, there might just be some scientific evidence to suggest that the earth came before the sun, whether or not one believes in an old earth or young earth account.

An Illusion of age?

Some young-earth creationists would argue that the age of the solar system is merely an illusion. That in the manner God made Adam and Eve as fully grown adults who one might ‘assume’ were 20-30 years old based on observation, only would have been 1 day old.

And so, the argument proposed is that we are not truly measuring the age of the universe, but only its current ‘mechanics’ of aging, and thereby, we might be making the mistake of applying current universal mechanical values or features, upon the origins of the Universe, making the illusion that the Earth, sun, stars, etc, – whether they just be the bodies of our solar system, or the rest of the stars and galaxies in the Universe, are older than they actually are.

This view of the sun and stars age isn’t based so much on hard evidence, but a theory that God simply placed them there, and then “dragged” the light to the Earth, making it seem as if the light had travelled to us for billions of years.

Scientific Evidence For a Younger Sun?

If it should be the case that the Bible really does teach the sun was made after the Earth (whether that be “light” appearing after the Earth’s creation before day 1, or via the passage of luminaries on day 4), is there any evidence we have on Earth at all that could support such a model and vindicate such an interpretation of the Bible? Surprisingly, there is, and that is the Earth’s water.

We should remember that we don’t really have a way of determining exactly how old the sun is or when it was formed, but the assumption is that the sun had to have come first, on the basis of observation of how other solar systems, suns and their planets form in the universe. The assumed age, then after that, is based upon the “life cycle” of stars as we know them.

However, this is all based upon the assumption that our Solar System developed naturalistically, without a divine hand. For example, Adam and Eve were said to be created as adults, but a person observing them would assume they were at least 20 to 30 years old, when in fact they could have been only 1 years old.

Therefore, we cannot discount the possibility that the current observations of our galaxy may be illusionary or deceptive to a degree, resulting in skewed calculations and scientific theories. But theories don’t prove anything, we have to work from the evidence at hand.

The potential evidence regarding water is most interesting, for scientists have now claimed the water on Earth is older than the sun…

“Much of the water on Earth and elsewhere in the solar system likely predates the birth of the sun, a new study reports.

The implications of our study are that interstellar water-ice remarkably survived the incredibly violent process of stellar birth to then be incorporated into planetary bodies,” study lead author Ilse Cleeves, an astronomy Ph.D. student at the University of Michigan” – Mike Wall, space.com

“New research has shown that water found on Earth is older than the Solar System... The study set out to discover when the planet’s water originally formed, before it was deposited on the newly made Earth. The international team of scientists found that a significant fraction of the water on our planet, and throughout our Solar System, predates the Sun. This ancient water already existed in the cloud that gave birth to the Sun rather than forming later in the Solar System’s history”. – Sky at Night Magazine

Because of this discovery, it has been assumed that the water on Earth “had” to have come from elsewhere and is not native to Earth, for that would make the Earth older than the sun. However, should the Bible creation account actually teach the Earth came before the sun, then the age of water just might be one of the single lines of evidence proving that may be so, and that we may not need to try and explain that water came from elsewhere.

Of course, that being said, there is ample textual evidence that this need not be the case, and that the Genesis account may in fact adequately coincide with current mainstream scientific models as we know. Science should not be seen as the enemy, but as the “tool” with which we study God’s creation, and may serve as the unexpected lens to provide us with the interpretation of the very things the Bible may very well be speaking of.

The most striking aspect of the water pre-dating the sun, I find is in the notion that those who do not believe in a creator are forced to believe that this ancient water had been flying through space on a rocks for trillions of years before our sun was formed, with no explanation as to its origins, and that it just so happened to collide with the Earth, which was placed in the most perfect location in the Universe to sustain life in every other way. All it required was that very water that, “by chance”, collided with our planet.

Whether one believes Earth existed before the sun or not, I find this notion of this “sequence of fortunate events” so laughably unlikely to happen by chance. I am truly forced to conclude that it could only be by divine providence, no matter the mechanism of the event.

Birds & Land Animals

So we seemed to have addressed the issues in regarding the luminaries, but what about the apparent contradiction when it comes to the statement that birds came before land animals from the old-earth perspective?

Whilst young earth creationists will say fossils don’t indicate passage of time, but only of a previous diaster, typically the Flood of Noah, if the fossils in the layers ground ‘are’ a timeline of events, then it would appear on the surface, that birds as we know them today, arguably did not become before land animals.

The issue here can really be said to be a taxonomy debate.

The position raised against Genesis, is that the argument assumes the Bible regards “reptiles and dinosaurs” to be “land animals”, whilst the later development of flying reptiles and our modern birds to be the “flying creatures”. Thus, scientists and opposers would claim the Bible has it back to front… But this may not be the case at all.

We have to remember, the chronological interpretation of fossil records confirm this order; fish, amphibians, reptiles, dinosaurs.

According to evolution, it is theorised based on fossil appearance that from the first cells in the earth, sea creatures first came to be and evolved into land reptiles (including dinosaurs) of which then turned into mammals, including modern birds (the earliest “true warm blooded feathered bird” to this day is debated, being considered to be either the Archaeopteryx, once thought to be a cold-blooded flying reptile or some “mid-way” form, and the earlier Pterosaur, also in a similar state of contestment over its warm versus cold bloodedness).

But the real question we have to ask is; what did the ‘Bible writers’ classify those animals to be if they indeed refered to them?

We must consider the fact that both Amphibians and Reptiles are water-based animals, animals capable of living in water an extremely long time, if not indefinitely. The Bible never states that none of the sea, or water based creatures that were first made, did not have the ability to walk up upon land.

Furthermore, the word definition for “sea creatures” and things “moving in water”, in both the Hebrew and Greek versions of Genesis, does not only refer to fish, but also can mean “serpents and dragons”, meaning snakes, and likely reptiles.

“Tanniym: (Ezek. 29:3) {tan-neem’}; intensive from the same as tan; a marine or land monster, i.e. Sea-serpent or jackal — dragon, sea-monster, serpent, whale”. – Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance

“Herpeton:
a creeping creature, reptile, especially a serpent. – Strong’s Concordance

Leading further off from this point, we should also consider that it is common knowledge to Evolutionists that dinosaurs and modern-day birds have remarkably akin features, and it is why they theorise that these (often assumed to be reptilian) creatures must have led the way to the evolution of modern birds.

However, it is often a hot topic of debate in the Evolution community, as mentioned earlier in regard to the Archaeopteryx and Pterosaur, over whether they had feathers or scales, and whether they were warm or cold-blooded.

A number of back and forth books, articles, writings, studies, and statements have been made over these things, such as the study lead by Paleontology Professor Baoyu Jiang in China, of the Pterosaurs (considered to be ‘the’ first ever flying animal) which states:

The pterosaurs had four types of feather-like structures: simple filaments (‘hairs’), bundles of filaments, filaments with a tuft halfway down and down feathers” – Professor Baoyu Jiang

We know for a fact, based off of fossils, that the earliest dinosaurs were “avian-like”, meaning “bird-like”, as opposed to being creatures that crawl on all fours like the later dinosaurs did (as opposed to what one would think to expect, considering the first creatures to ever walk on land were crawling creatures, I digress).

These are the two-legged upright dinosaurs you often see, such as in movies like Jurassic Park. Today we have much proof that they had feathers, from archaeological findings of preserved feathers and other scientific study advancements.

So yes, that means it is almost certain, that avian-like bipedal dinosaurs did not have scales, but rather, feathers (sorry Jurassic Park fans). For years the depictions of dinosaurs have been wrong in schools, books and museums alike, but are now slowly being corrected.

The evidence stacks up so much, in fact, that it seems they always had feathers from the earliest ages, and never evolved from a reptile state at all.

“Researchers agree that birds are dinosaurs, but when did dinosaurs start becoming birds? New excavations in Siberia reveal that one sure sign of birdiness, the presence of feathers, has very deep roots in the dino evolutionary tree; indeed, dinosaurs may have been sporting feathers from the very beginning of their existence about 240 million years ago”. – Michael Balter, science.org

“A new study by Yale scientists shed light on dinosaur metabolism by identifying molecular markers for metabolic stress found in skeletal material. They found that the earliest dinosaurs and pterosaurs had exceptionally high metabolic rates and were warm-blooded animals… Scientists showed that many early dinosaurs had a metabolic rate comparable to modern birds“. – Tech Explorist

“Some nonavian dinosaurs, including carnivorous tyrannosaurs, may have had brains that were hardwired for flight long before even the earliest known birds started flapping their wings, a new study finds. Scientists used high-resolution CT scanners to closely study the craniums of modern birds, nonavian dinosaurs and Archaeopteryx, considered by some to be one of the earliest known birds. They found that characteristics of the typical “bird brain” could be found much earlier in history than was previously thought. – LiveScience

“Turkeys, ostriches, and eagles are not really that different in their looks or behaviors than extinct dinosaurs such as Velociraptor” – Steve Brusatte

So what does this mean for us and our understanding of the Biblical account?

Well, this means that right after the “sea creatures and things that move in the water” (the fish, amphibians and reptiles), that birds, that is, avian bipedal dinosaurs came next. Indeed, I am suggesting that the Bible classifies these giant flightless birds into its categorisation of “birds of the heavens”, just like chickens, ostriches, emus, and alike.

This then brings into the realm of possibility, that included in the category of the birds mentioned in the creation account, would not only be the flying Archaeopteryx and the Pterosaur, but also other early dinosaurs of those periods, such as the Velociraptor, Theropod, and yes, even the Tyrannosaurus-Rex.

MYTHS About Dinosaurs You PROBABLY Still Believe! by Origins Explained

Following these avian-creatures, according to the secular timeline, then came the bulking quadrupedal (four-limbed) dinosaurs. Thus, as the Genesis account states, indeed, it was “birds, then land animals”.

From the initial creation of all these “animal kinds”, several species were then able to adapt and breed into their varieties. After all, the Bible does not state that these animals cannot evolve or adapt at all in some manner or form, in fact to the contrary, the Bible says “let the land produce” animals and all their kinds (Genesis 1:24).

Length of Creation & Age of the Earth

One of the biggest contentions with Genesis is the idea that Earth was made in six literal days. This obviously comes into conflict with science, because via both sediment layers of the Earth, and the distance of light from the sun and stars, proves the Earth is millions if not billions of years old. If the Bible, including Genesis, is truly God’s word, then it is expected to be telling the objective truth.

This in turn has resulted in different positions amongst Christians, some concluding science must be wrong (or worse, lying and working for Satan), whilst others believe that the Earth and universe were indeed made in six days, but that the age science observes is an “illusion” based on the idea that God “dragged the light” from the stars in the distance, so the Earth didn’t have to wait millions of years for the light to reach it, and the sediment layers being caused by the global Noahchian flood. A third option is the idea that the Bible doesn’t in fact teach a literal six day creation account…

All of these are very interesting ideas, but all come with their pros and cons.

Young-Earth Old-Illusion Theory

If we put aside the idea that all science is just one big lie (because this would involve a massive conspiracy, worldwide and is very accusatory of many innocent, well meaning and talented men and women. Not that bias or deception has never existed in the scientific world, but I digress), we should take a closer look at the idea of “light being dragged” and “sedimentary flood layers”.

Whilst a very creative theory, perhaps even containing some element of truth, it might not quite hold up to the multiple layers (no pun intended) of evidence. For one, if the flood were responsible for ‘all’ the fossils and sediment layers on Earth used to estimate the age of the Earth and study the development of life, then all of the fossils would be randomised and no accurate development or chronological order of life could be studied.

For example, we know humans and mammoths co-existed, for their fossils co-exist in the same or close layers, and we have ancient tools uncovered by archaeology, which reveals men used the corpses of mammoths to make tools. If all fossils and layers resulted from the flood, and all things were made in six literal days, then all of the fossils would be jumbled up, and we’d find bones of men next to dinosaur bones and so on. But this has never (to my knowledge) been so.

Of course, there ‘are’ some interesting counter points to consider, such as the “flood water depth” theory, which suggests smaller animals and humans were able to climb to higher ground as the flood waters arose for 40 days, this creating an “illusion” of sedimentary layers of time placed down. Other animals not being found burried with certain species, simply due to geographic location.

Whilst at first it sounds far fetched to very sceptical minds, there is indeed evidence of scientists in the past being wrong about the extiniction of an animal based merely on the absense of fossil appearance after a certain layer of sediment, only to find the animal in the wild or the sea years later in the modern day. It’s of note that most ancient dinosaur remains are found in the “suffocation position”, which leads some people to belive that they may have died as recently as in the Bible’s Flood account.

In addition, we see much ancient art work of creatures that look very dinosaur like, and we’ve even found remarkbly well preserved and fresh blood and tissue samples of dinosaurs too!

So, it’s all a very interesting theory to consider, we should never be closed minded to the options. Of course if the overwhelming evidence proves this isn’t to be the case, this is not a bad thing for us, because as we’ve already discussed, the fossil record of the development and appearance of animals does in fact line up with the Biblical passages anyway.

Old-Earth Literal-Day (Gap Period) Theory

This theory suggests that the Earth is as old as secular science claims, but that the creative days were literal 24 hour days.

The interpretation suggested in this regard, is that it involves something called “gap theory”, in that it suggests Genesis 1:1 is a creation event in itself, and not an opening title or introductory statement. Through this, it is then suggested that between verse 1 and the following verses, we do not know how much time passes, meaning that the Earth may have stood desolate for millions of years before God began to actually begin his creative works upon it, of which were the literal 24 hour six days of creation.

I personally subscribe to the idea of the gap theory myself. For I reason; if the first verse was but an introductory or title for Genesis, as opposed to an actual event of which was a “part” of the creation process, then there would be a contradiction, in that the first official statement or stage of God’s creative works would be in fact the second sentence, in which doesn’t state the Earth was made, but says “the Earth was desolate”, meaning it was already there and God “then operated” upon it. But such a take is not consistent with the entire premise of which is “Biblical Creation” and the first line would be in contradiction of itself. As such, I would contend that the first line is a statement of a creation event within itself, of which we do not know the time passage of, meaning between the initial creation and the “gap”, there could have been millions or billions of years…  

We even see some potential scriptural evidence for this in Hebrew language.

It has been noted that some translations of the Hebrew from Genesis 1, suggest that rather than it being; “In The Beginning, God created”, as the Hebrew as no “Definite Article” for “In the Beginning” it argubly being better translated as a clause:

• “When God began creating – the Earth was dark formless and void”.

This rendition being suggested by some Christian scholars of antiquity and Hebrew language such as Michael Heiser, and the translation appearing both Jewish and some Christian Bible translations such as; The Contemporary Torah, JPS (2006), The Living Bible and the Common English Bible.

Which gives us a very different understanding that God was operating on something in the creation week which had already been there for a while by his hand, and that he was begining to bring order and life to what was barren. This gives us the time period needed for an old earth, with a literal creation week.

However, the idea of the development of Earth and its life forms following in the space of a week again finds the same problems as it does with the above young-Earth theory. The fossil record shows that the order of appearance of animals happened over time, and not within the space of a week.

However, this being said, I myself had a personal theory which was along similar lines of reason, but rather than the six creative 24 hour days being contained within a week, I theorised it was possible that these six 24 hour periods of God’s working hand were spaced out across an overall length of millions of years. In other words, God spends one 24 hour day setting up a stage of development, and then lets it grow and work by itself, very much akin to the way God tends to interact with humanity and his creation in general, that is, periodically.

This theory could merge within the understanding we have of evolution (be it micro or macro), but is a process guided by God, where He possibly may have set up “multiple trees” of life independently of one another (something modern scientists are now finding to be more likely, as opposed to Darwin’s singular tree of life) at each stage of a 24 hour day interaction.

In a sense, it could be described to be like growing a bonsai tree. Day one, we plant the seed and water it, we wait for it to grow, and as it does, we periodically may spend a day trimming it or shaping it, and then letting it grow again some more. Over a month of growing, we may have spent “four days” actually “tending” and “guiding” the growth of our bonsai tree. Likewise, the “days of creation”, may have been God “planting seeds” and “shaping creation” in the way he wanted it to go, and then letting the natural process (of which He programmed) get to work by itself, which is very much in line with God’s persona and patterns of behaviour as seen throughout the scriptures.

In this model, God spends one day sowing the seeds of the earliest sea life and bird life, and programs them to evolve independently over time into all of their various kinds and species, He waits, then again, He sows the seeds of land life.

It all seems to look very concrete, but then we come to a problem…

To remain consistent with this theory, we would have to suggest that the “seed of humans” was sown in the same 24 hour day as the animals and then developed over time… this takes us into the realm of Darwinian evolution, and opens the doors to the theistic evolutionary idea that “God caused man to evolve from apes” or something else, which goes against the plain notion of Genesis, where man is uniquely made from the dust of the ground, with no man ever existing before them, and Eve even being said to be the “mother of all humans living”.

This theory also leaves no time for the sixth day of creation to be a 24 hour day, for all land animal life has been shown to have developed and appear over a length of time spanning hundreds of thousands of years, and so suggests that either humans too were evolving from the “seeds” God planted all the way until we reach Adam, or alternatively, we would have to claim that the first man Adam was created on that day hundreds of thousands of years ago, which would then not line up with traditionally understood Biblical chronology and genealogy, which places the creation of Adam roughly 6000-7000 years ago, give or take. However… there is one potential solution.

We could possibly suggest, if this theory was accurate, that perhaps “man was developing in the dust” for hundreds of thousands of years whilst animal life was flourishing and developing in the meantime, by which time they had fully developed, man was then made to rise up.

For we have to remember, we are not told just how long it took for each of God’s creative works to develop individually. In this case, both the animals and man could have had their “creative seeds sown” at the same time, but whilst animals were out about and developing, man simply was not consciously existing, but was for lack of better words “sleeping in the dust” as God allowed him to slowly form for millions of years until he woke from the ground, just in time to see all of the wonderful animal life that had been in fruitful development and variation, all around him. After all, not all flowers and trees grow at the same rate, the same could be said of God’s creative works.

But what we cannot do is separate the sixth day into two halves, either it is one 24 hour period of literal instant creation, the sowing of developmental seeds of creation, or something else… which leads on to the last theory.

Old-Earth Day-Age Theory

The day-age theory is another interpretation of scripture which suggests that the Earth is old, and that each creative “day” is not a literal day, but a poetic way of referring to what are in fact several “eras” or “generations” of creation, from the point of view of God, seeing that the Bible teaches that “a day to YHWH is a like a thousand years to man” (2 Peter 3:8, Psalm 90:4).

This interpretation can in fact be supported by scripture, both in language translation and via direct statement.

As briefly mentioned in my “scientific facts in the Bible” article, the time period of creation is mentioned at the ending statement of the creative process in Genesis chapter 2; “This is a history of the heavens and the earth in the time they were created, in the day that YHWH God made earth and heaven”.

This is why I stated earlier that it was important to include Genesis 2 within Genesis 1, because it is so often overlooked by the majority of Creationists and Atheists alike. It is all meant to be read as a singular ongoing passage, for the chapters and verses of the Bible were not arranged until many thousands of years later by Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, in the year 1227 A.D

The word here often rendered “day” in English is translated from a Hebrew word; “Yom”. Yom has several definitions of time, including that of a lengthy time period spanning further than a literal twenty-four-hour day, which includes “eternity”, “generations”, eras” and “ages”. This is why in fact, several Bible translations, which were published long before the discovery of the Earth’s age through the scientific method, actually render the said verse as “in the generations that YHWH God made earth and heaven”. Such translations that include this variation of verse are;  

The John Wycliff Bible (1381), The William Tyndale Bible (1534), The King James Bible (1604), Douay-Rheims Bible (1609), Brenton Septuagint Translation (1844) English Revised Version (1881), Webster’s Bible Translation (1883), American Standard Version (1901), JPS Tanakh (1917), American King James Version (1999) and The King James Bible (2000).

As we see, each “creative day” of Genesis, then, can be argued to be spanning “generations” or “eras”, not literal twenty-four-hour days. Each “Yom”, being an “age”. Yom gains its definition according to the context of the passage.

There is also in fact even some further potential textual evidence when we read the finer details of the Greek Septuigent version of chapter 2:

What is often criticised of chapter 2, is that it would appear to contradict Genesis 1, in that it says the animals were formed after man, whereas Genesis 1 says the opposite.

There have been several ways of addressing this issue, one being pointing to the fact that Genesis 2 has a different narrative purpose to Genesis 1, and this pattern can indeed be seen throughout the Bible in general, where we have different variations of the same account side by side, but focusing on different aspects.

However, what is interesting is that we are told God “continued” to create the animals, using the Greek phrase “Eti”. There are several meanings to this phrase, of which include the notion of an action that is being continually carried out from a prior starting point, or of something happening simultaneously:

“(a) of time: still, yet, even now, (b) of degree: even, further, more, in addition” – Strong’s Concordance

“2089 éti (an adverb) – properly, continue (remain)”. – HELPS Word-studies

“Of a thing which went on formerly, whereas now a different state of things exists or has begun to exist…

b. of a thing which continues at present, even now, farther, longer (where it is thought strange that, when one thing has established itself, another has not been altered or abolished, but is still adhered to or continues)

of degree and increase; with the comparative, even, yet”. – Thayer’s Greek Lexicon

In this respect, Genesis 2:19 can be translated as:

• “And God continued on to create the animals from the dust”.

This sense of the word can indicate an “overlap” of the creative works, that they began formally but were still going on over a length of time up until Adam’s time. Which may support the notion of long term development.

However, it should be noted that there are also arguments against this notion…

Athiestic opposers and young Earth creationists alike, will point to the verses which say “a morning, an evening, a day”, to prove that these days are meant to be read as 24 hour days. However, this could be argued to be, as aforementioned, a “day” in the perception of God. A “morning and evening” from His point of view.

Of course, there is another argument against this notion, the fact that the Sabbath day of the Jews was set up as a reminder of “God’s rest” from his creative works, and so in turn, his people were to rest on the “seventh day” of the week

• “Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because on that day He rested from all the work of creation that He had accomplished”. – Genesis 2:2-3
• “For in six days YHWH made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, but on the seventh day He rested. Therefore YHWH blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy“. – Exodus 20:11

This appears to be very strong reasoning, and it was in part what inspired my earlier personal interpretation on the days being 24 hour periods, but over a span of “ages” or “generations”, for we do have evidence for such on the basis of Genesis 2 rendering the creative process as “the day” or the “the ages”, hence, my thought that “both” the 24 hour days and the generations of creation both holding truth to them.

However, it is also possible that God was accommodating man’s lifespan when he made the literal seventh day of the week the Sabbath for the Jews, even if God’s creative works and “seventh day rest” was not a literal 24 hour period. But do we have evidence in scripture for this? Do we have scriptures which show that the sabbath rest days can be different lengths of time according to relative context?

Yes, in fact we do!

• “Now we who have believed enter that rest… God again designated a certain day as “Today,” when a long time later He spoke through David as was just stated: “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.” For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day. There remains, then, a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For whoever enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from His…” – Hebrews 4:3, 7-10
• “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: When you enter the land that I am giving you, the land itself must observe a Sabbath to YHWH. For six years you may sow your field and prune your vineyard and gather its crops. But in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of complete rest for the land—a Sabbath to YHWH“. – Leviticus 25:2-4
• “Speak to the Israelites and say, ‘On the first day of the seventh month you are to have a day of rest, a sacred assembly announced by trumpet blasts”. – Leviticus 23:24

As we can see, a “Sabbath rest” is not limited to a 24 hour period, but can have various lengths of time, according to context.

The Israelites celebrated literal “Sabbath days”, whilst the land was to have its Sabbath rest every seven years, which in turn lasted a year. Christians are said to be “eternally resting” in the Sabbath day through Yeshua.

Therefore, it may stand to reason that if all Sabbaths are not equal, then Gods “rest day” can be argued not to be 24 hours, but in fact a far longer period of time, and if God’s “rest” is to be longer than 24 hours, then so must have been his “work days”.

We must remember, we are told, God’s “days” are different in experience of time and nature, to human days. In fact, God is “infinite”, so to Him there is no such thing as a “day” or “time” at all. Everything is spoken in human figures of speech to help us grasp as humanly as possible, the activity of God.

We have seen that God instituted the Sabbath because “he rested on the seventh day of his work”, yet based upon that “seventh day” of rest, we have many different Sabbaths, ranging from seven years, seven months, or seven days, or even eternity, depending on the activity.

If a Sabbath rest is meant to be reflective of God’s rest, then why are not all Sabbaths the same? Why are fields given a year’s worth of rest every seven years? Is it perhaps because a year to the land is akin to one day? And why a special Sabbath every seven months?

The special detail here seems not to be the 24 hour day, but rather, counts of seven, of which often reflects perfection and completion throughout the scriptures. Thus, the creative “days” of Genesis could very well have been ages or generations of time from a human standpoint, and we have plenty of scriptural evidence to support the notion that God has arranged the various Sabbaths according to individual context, as opposed to relation to a set in stone period of time. Therefore, the seventh Sabbath day of rest for Israelites cannot be taken at face value to be a ‘literal’ reflection of God’s rest day from his creations.

A final note to make, is that, unknownst to most people, including most Christians, this day-age interpretation of Genesis in fact has been the traditional Christian view since the 1st Century A.D according to the ancient writings, even though the secular world did not believe in an Old Earth at that time.

Surprisingly, Young Earth Creationism on the other hand dates back only as recent as the 1800s-1900s, which was the result of an extremist response toward Darwinian evolution, resulting in “throwing out the baby with the bathwater” as one would say.

The Origins of Young Earth Creationism by Inspiring Philosophy

Therefore, as opposed to what many opposers of this interpretation would try to claim, this cannot be argued to be merely a “modern argument” applied retrospectively to the scriptures either, further authenticating this interpretation.

The Age & Origin of Mankind

So far, it appears we have able to adequately tackle much of the opposition raised against Genesis. But now we come to another hurdle… the age and origin of mankind.

According to secular theory, humans are at least 100,000 years old, and are believed to have evolved from the ancestors of various families of ape or the common ancestor of. From these ancestors is it believed that modern ape families, humans, as well as other families said to be best described as “sub-human”, such as the Neanderthals, originated via evolutionary adaptation over the course of hundreds of thousands of years, in very populous numbers.

In contrast, according to the Bible, if we take the Genesis genealogy literally, mankind is said to have originated somewhere between 6000-8000 years ago (depending on one’s interpretation of early Bible chronology and manuscript varients), and beginning with two humans only, as opposed to a large population.

So where do we begin in addressing this glaring differentiation? Well, when it comes to this subject, you may be surprised to learn that the assumption of mankind’s age doesn’t come from stable evidence, but rather a string of assumptions based upon the paradigm of a theory, that being the belief of the gradual macroevolution of humanity. And to the contrary, there is in fact evidence which supports the Biblical paradigm over the evolutionary one.

Genome Evidence Supports Genesis

As mentioned in my “human genome” article, there is evidence now confirmed through DNA, that all modern humans existing today, in stark contrast to what was originally believed by evolutionary scientists for many years, originate from just a single couple, and this data is perfectly in line with Genesis.

According to the very men who discovered it, this new data perplexed their team of evolutionary scientists so much at first, that they attempted to deny it and claim it to be flawed or misinterpreted data, before then being forced into coming up with new theories to explain the undeniable evidence, in which they claim there either must have been a “recent extinction event” of mankind, leaving only two remaining some 100,000 years ago, or that the original couple’s genes just happen to consistently win the genetic lottery amongst their follow human peers down through the ages.

“…this genetic Eve is simply the most recent female ancestor to whom all modern humans can trace their genealogy. In other words, there were many women who came before her and many women who came after, but her genetic code is the point from which all modern branches on humanity’s family tree grew… the human population became dramatically reduced, and there weren’t many women around to have kids, the stage is set for one “Lucky Mother,” as Cann puts it, to emerge as a most recent common ancestor… It’s possible that after a few generations, the mtDNA of the other women died out. If a woman produces only male offspring, she won’t pass on her mtDNA since children don’t receive mtDNA from their father. This means that while the woman’s sons will have her mtDNA, her grandchildren won’t, and her line will be lost”. – How Stuff Works, Eve Gene: Do We All Descend From a Common Female Ancestor

“Just a few thousand years before the most recent single ancestor shared by all living humans was the time at which all humans who were then alive either left no descendants alive today or were common ancestors of all humans alive today. However, such a late date is difficult to reconcile with the geographical spread of our species and the consequent isolation of different groups from each other”. – Mitochondrial Eve, Wikipedia

So we can confirm, that all of mankind today can be traced to a single couple. Of course, the question still lies on “when” that was. 100,000 years ago, verses 8000-6000 years ago.

In study of the Genome, there is massive debate over just when the shared ancestors of all humanity day lived, but there is evidence which can support the notion of an age of traditional biblical proportions:

Two major studies of modern humans’ Y chromosomes suggest that ‘Y-chromosome Adam’ and ‘mitochondrial Eve’ may have lived around the same time after all”. –  Ewen Callaway, Nature News.

“…this rate places mtEve at 6000 years ago, obviously nobody think that’s the case”. – Ann Gibbons on Parsons & Al Study

“The time period that human MRCA lived is unknown. Rohde et. al put forth a “rough guess” that the MRCA could have existed 5000 years ago; however, the authors state that this estimate is ‘extremely tentative, and the model contains several obvious sources of error, as it was motivated more by considerations of theoretical insight and tractability than by realism‘”. – Mitochondrial Eve, Wikipedia

Assumptions Based on Paradigm

The idea that mankind has existed for more than 8000 years, as mentioned, is based upon a paradigm of assumption, that mankind had evolved over hundreds of thousands of years. However, the actual majority of the archaeological evidence of mankind is in fact, far more recent when it comes to evidence of early society and bone fossil dating, whilst many other fossils that are reported to give older dates are often either forced to confirm to a bias of framework, or are attained through flawed methodologies.

To grasp this subject, firstly we should have a basic understanding of how ancient history and pre-history is studied.

Ancient history is studies through many fields, these fields involve largely the consensus of writings, events, and dating of archaeological finds via radiocarbon dating or similar methods.

The things that are dated can range from tools, pottery, writings (tablets, paper, etc), bone remains, and of course fossils.

When it comes to ancient pre-historic times, that is, before the time of writing, we are reliant on physical finds, such as skeletons and fossils. A fossil is simply the preserved remains of something that was once living long ago. Usually fossil remains are contained within things such as rock sediment, amber or coal. How something becomes fossilised has many variables, but ultimately is a result of very specific conditions. The recently deceased being, is soon or immediately encased by some sort of sediment or mineral after its death, and is protected from outside elements, thus preventing total decay.

It’s through fossils that scientists try to form a picture of the early history of the Earth, of the appearance of life. However, there are many variables and conditions which need to be taken into account. These things being “what layer” a fossil is found in, if it has been contaminated, and so on.

Radiocarbon dating methods are limited in respect that they can only tell us how much carbon has been lost in a lifeform, during its lifetime. Radiocarbon dating alone does not tell us ‘exactly when’ it lived, additionally, radiocarbon dating can only reliably trace back to 50,000 years. In order to try and gain an accurate date of a fossil, the carbon date has to be “multiplied” by the estimated date the lifeform was said to be living based on the surrounding conditions it was found in (such as what layer it was found, what historical objects it may have buried with it, and so on).

The method also operates on an assumptive premise, that the amount of carbon in a lifeform has been consistent throughout the ages, and that the rate of carbon decay is also consistent.

Therefore, it’s important to understand that many dates for human fossils which are determined to be pre-historic, are subject to interpretive bias, according not only to historical evidence, but theoretical bias according to the assumed evolutionary origins of man.

Whilst there is a notion that there are fossils dating back hundreds of thousands of years, the assertion of these dates are up for debate. A key difference between fossils of humans and their supposed relatives, is that they are not found in extraordinarily deep sedimentary layers that would impose extremely old dates on them, like it is in regard to other species.

Rather, all homo-sapien bones, “neanderthal”, “denisovan” bones and alike, are found near enough to the surface that the actual age of the bones are in debate, and many dates over the years have been thrown around, differing in the range of a few thousand to hundreds of thousands of years, and the suggestions for those altering dates have largely been influenced by the framework of evolutionary math (the assumption that a certain species lived in a certain time frame and that it takes a certain amount of years for something to evolve).

There have been various attempts and methods to correct these flaws, but to this day carbon dating will greatly vary, even on the same fossil. At times fossil dates agree with other evolutionary methods of age estimation, but at other times it will oppose them. On this subject, Professor and Neuroscientist, Bruce Brew stated;

“If a C-14 date supports our theories, we put it in the main text. If it does not entirely contradict them, we put it in a footnote. And if it is completely out of date, we just drop it.”. – Professor Bruce Brew

We see here then, that dating fossils is not such a clear cut task as it would appear to be on the surface, and is highly reliant on several other surrounding factors to make a more concrete estimation of the age of a fossil, as well as being reliant on… an assumed framework or narrative. 

As such is the case, it means we can assert a possibility that fossils of humans and their supposed sub-human relatives are not so old as suggested by evolutionists. But we’d have to look at other surrounding evidence, too. 

Whilst evolutionists will claim that humans are hundreds of thousands of years old, if not millions, it is universally accepted statement that human society as we know it, and solid evidence of human activity outside of the occasional broken pieces of pottery or tools assumed to be hundreds of thousands of years old based upon dating of the “materials” they are constructed out of (I’m sure you may see the issue with dating a tool from its material is not a good indication of how to tell when a human actually “crafted” that material into an object), is roughly from, you guessed it, six-thousand to eight-thousand years ago.

This is why secular historians, scholars and historical archaeologists can’t and don’t tell us anything about human life beyond that timeframe, and why it is left to the guesses and estimations of evolutionary scientists and palaeontologists to discover and educate on these matters. Before that time frame, there is hardly anything there at all to be taught, as if human culture just suddenly goes off the grid, leaving us only with educated guesses in regard to the remains of bones and cave drawings, of which in themselves are questionable in date. 

According to the Biblical date (if the genealogy between Adam to Abraham is to be read literally), humans first arrived on the scene roughly in the 4000s-8000’s B.C.E. Interestingly, after this date, we see evidence of a sudden surge of human activity, the rise of civilisations, tribes, nations, and an incredible rate of human technological advancement compared to that of years prior (if we were to assume intelligent humans did indeed live thousands of years before this date).

It is not until 3150 BCE do we see the first advanced civilisation appear in secular history, of which is Egypt, which also goes hand in hand with the descriptions in the Bible in Genesis, as was one of the very first nations ever mentioned after the global deluge. So secular history and the solid, “datable” evidence of the existence of man and civilisation supports the narrative of the Genesis account. 

There is in fact a great video on YouTube which was made upon the basis of the secular framework of the history of mankind.

It is interesting to note that there is a “stasis” of inactivity, with barely if any traces (considering the debatable nature of these “ancient human finds”) of humanity for hundreds of thousands of years, until after the year of biblical chronological appearance of man (8000-4000 B.C.E), from which then there is a sudden “explosion” of activity and rapid societal development, not too dissimilar to the Cambrian explosion and the appearance of sea life from what was previously “nothing”.

It is noteworthy that advanced civilisations begin to rapidly boon exaclty at the spot in the timeline where the Bible says they did.

“The History of the World” by Ollie Bye

Of course, we still have yet to address where all those so-called “sub-human species” came from, what the remains of beings like the Neanderthals were, and why modern humans carry their DNA.

Human “Subspecies”

It is a fact in the field, that we have no direct evolutionary connections whatsoever to our “common ape ancestors”, or with the rest of life as a whole, but only do we have theoretical connections.

The actual hard evidence demonstrates the sudden appearances of complex life forms and pre-existing whole structures, but this is often rejected or denied by many scientists, merely because pre-existing complexity and sudden appearances of functional life forms, boarders too close to the notion of sponantious and complex creation.

Quotes from many evolutionary scientists themselves, whom are also self-professed athiests, confess this.

“Instead of finding the gradual unfolding of life, what geologists of Darwin’s time, and geologists of the present day actually find is a highly uneven or jerky record; that is, species appear in the sequence very suddenly, show little or no change during their existence in the record, then abruptly go out of the record.” – David M. Raup, Evolutionary Paleontologist

“We have no evidence at all that the tree of life is a reality” – Eric Bapteste, Evolutionary scientist

“To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the same validity as a bedtime story​—amusing, perhaps even instructive, but not scientific.”​ – Henry Gee, Paleontologist & Evolutionary Biologist

“Evolution is like getting a child to build a lego arch, or a piece of architecture – if you give a child just bricks, it will take far longer, and we don’t have that amount of time for individual mutations to evolve functionality, but give a child pre-formed bricks, it is blindingly obvious if the child is given the ‘pre-formed’ structures, will  get there ‘much’ faster, and that’s exactly what we have seen nature do – and the human genome shows that this is exactly what must have happened to us in evolutionary history…

Mutations are not random… and so far, it has not been shown that this proccess could give rise to a new species… [just] new varieties [of a species]…

…I was one of the few to argue against the reductionist case, and I expected two others to help me. One did, another didn’t, and he came up to me… and said, ‘Denis, I would support you if I didn’t think that that brings God back in‘”. – Denis Noble, Evolutionary Physiologist & Biologist

“It’s as if [the animal phyla] were just planted there without any evolutionary history…” – Richard Dawkins

“To the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to these assumed earliest periods prior to the Cambrian system, I can give no satisfactory answer“. – Charles Darwin

Nevertheless, a huge attack opposers often scream and shout about, is “neanderthal DNA” being found in modern human genes, as proof of “interbreeding with subhuman primates”.

Of course, the problem with this is that, in order to breed, something must be of the same species. Dogs breed with dogs, cats with cats, horses with horses. From such breeding, be it through selective traits, or environmental adaptation, we gain variations of these animals, and no matter how many times you breed them to gain totally different looking breeds, they all are still able to cross breed. Donkeys can mate with zebras, chihuahuas with bulldogs, and so on. So, if a neanderthal or some other acclaimed “subspecies” can mate with a homo-sapien, it can only mean they are one and the same.  

Ernst Mayr defined the meaning of species in 1942. He wrote that a species is a group that can breed only among themselves, excluding all others.

Thus, according to evolutionist’s own statements, in reality a “subspecies” of human, being able to breed with a human is not at all something that has or has ever existed. Rather, these “subspecies” are better described as extinct “ethnicities” of humankind. The minor skeletal differences do not serve as any sort of evidence that they were not homo-sapien, for many greatly varied skull and skeleton structures of “confirmed to be” homo-sapiens have been found, such as the skulls of Aboriginal Australians, which compared to Caucasian skulls are extremely different and could easily be mistaken as one of these “human subspecies” if lined up in a row on a museum display. 

Homo-sapien Aboriginal skull compared to a homo-sapein Caucasian skull

Furthermore, genetically, the notion that these other peoples were “different species” is becoming more and more questionable the further we get into the research, and that the differences can, as I mentioned above myself, can be explained by ethnic differences alone:

“Neanderthals, which disappeared from the archaeological record roughly 40,000 years ago, have long been considered our closest evolutionary relatives. But almost since the first discovery of Neanderthal remains in the 1800s, scientists have been arguing over whether Neanderthals constitute their own species or if they’re simply a subset of our own species, Homo sapiens, that has since gone extinct….

‘Neanderthals and humans were interbreeding’, Jaume Bertranpetit, an evolutionary biologist at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain, told Live Science, adding that Neanderthals and H. sapiens also interbred with another group of early hominids, the Denisovans. It’s possible, then, that all three could represent different versions of the same species,  he said.’‘Neanderthals and humans were interbreeding’, Jaume Bertranpetit, an evolutionary biologist at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain, told Live Science, adding that ‘Neanderthals and H. sapiens also interbred with another group of early hominids, the Denisovans. It’s possible, then, that all three could represent different versions of the same species‘,  he said.

Bertranpetit pointed to modern humans as an example. People around the world have noticeable differences in stature or skin, hair and eye color, but we’re remarkably similar from a genetic standpoint. The amount of genetic variation between any two individuals is only about 0.1%, meaning that only one base pair out of every 1,000 will be different. In comparison, the 2010 paper showed that the Neanderthal genome was 99.7% percent identical to that of five present-day humans…

‘To have big differences in morphology does not mean you need to have big differences in genetics; it just means you need some differences in specific genes,” Bertranpetit said. “So this idea that they were different species doesn’t make any sense to me as a geneticist‘.” – LiveScience, Are Neanderthals and Homo sapiens the same species?

In fact, on the very subject of various species and subspecies, another thing to consider is whether some of these skeletal remains are even human, or “related to humans” at all. Some skeletal remains may in fact just be extinct apes with no relation to man whatsoever, and the history of evolutionary “icons” have included several demonstrable frauds and mistakes over the years.

The pictures and drawings of “ape men”, may be, at best, entertaining, but are not fact. Any and all artists depictions of what these men, or “otherwise”, may have looked like, is based purely on the imagination, and holds no baring in reality. It is not possible to know what a creature’s external appearance looked like from the bones alone.

Take, for example, these drawings by Palaeoartist C. M. Kosemen of modern day animals, via the method evolutionary artists use to draw up creatures based upon their bones:

Imagine credited to The Daily Mail

The re-imagining of many modern animals based on nothing but their bare bones, as we can see, are extremely alien. Therefore, how can we rely upon them to be telling us what ‘any’ pre-historic creature looked like?

If modern skeletons that belong to living species can confuse people, even experts, why can we assume what the outer bodily appearance and muscle structure of ancient skeletons of extinct species looked like? To assume what something is based on its bones alone, and then put it in an evolutionary sequence of life, is nothing but assumption based upon the imagination.

Furthermore, far from the idea that man evolved from animal, the studies of human varieties leads more so to conclusions that these ancient peoples were far more similar to us than they ever were different from us, as opposed to what schools, museums and books would try to inoculate in the everyday man, woman and child, that these “human subspecies” were dumb, clumsy, cultureless, club bashing, rock smacking, grunting ape men.

On the contrary, the remains of fossils of which are scientifically confirmed to be related to homo-sapiens, are also proven to have had rich culture, language, tradition and intellect.

Neanderthals buried their dead, a stone-lined pit in southwest France held the 70,000-year-old remains of a man wrapped in bearskin. Most researchers agree that Neanderthals were skilled hunters and craftsmen who made tools, used fire, buried their dead (at least on occasion), cared for their sick and injured and even had a few symbolic notions.  Neanderthals were not so stupid’, says Maureille. The site’s many fossilized reindeer parts hint at organized hunting and butchering”. – Stan Fellow

The only thing separating us from “them”, then, is minor skeletal structural differences (which can also be observed in skeletons classified as homo-sapien, as seen above).

It is the secular world in the frame of evolution which the presumed date of their appearance and disappearance is claimed. Calculated, not purely by reliable methods which tell us with certainty what year they are from, but rather, as already mentioned earlier, dating combined and placed in a mathematical framework of estimation based upon the idea of the length of time it takes for evolution to transmorph one species into another.

It is the assumption that the neanderthal is an “evolutionary predecessor”, which is what leads to the claim of their arrival being 200,000 years ago, as opposed to pure radiocarbon dating of the fossils themselves. But when these fossils are dated merely upon the lone merits of radiocarbon readings and no additional calculating based upon the theories of evolutionary ancestry, their ages become far, far younger, and the same can be said of ancient homo-sapien bones. 

In fact, such concerns of the misinterpretation of data in this way has been voiced by others in the field, such as evolutionary Archaeologist Clive Finlayson who states;

“Radiocarbon methodology on bone will not resolve the question of the last Neanderthals… What I think the method is giving us is a skew, a bias, towards older dates by the very nature of the preservation”. – Clive Finlayson

Of course, those such as Clive and akin to him, are not stating they believe man or neanderthals were only a few thousand years old, I do not wish to be accused to misquoting the professors to my own agenda, they of course believes in the notion of human evolution and the existence of humanity being hundreds of thousands of years old. However, it is their concerns over the inaccuracy of radiocarbon dating and bias in the scientific community to “applying older dates” to their fossils, of which is the main point to be highlighted, which expands into the evolutionary framework on the whole. 

On that basis, we can assert that it is possible, purely on dating alone, without any other applied frameworks or calculations based upon assumptions of the origins of man, these bones are not as old as many would assert, and therefore can easily fit into the premise of the biblical date of humanity’s arrival, if of course, the Bible writers intended such chronology to be taken literally (which is in itself an entirely different subject of textual and theological examination altogether). 

Likewise, scientists now are concerned that the entire proccess of radicarbon dating might be in danger of being no longer a reliable tool for measuring by 2050, simply because of the fact that carbon changes in the atmosphere over time will result in brand new materials being dated as if they were ancient, and in modern times this has already happened with some measurements of recent volcanic activity:

“If we keep burning fossil fuels at this rate, we’ll add so much extract c-12 to the atmosphere that new materials in 2050 will seem 1000 years old“. – Why Carbon Dating Might Be in Danger, Scifi Show

“Rocks gathered from recently erupted Mt. Ngaurhoe [67 years ago] in New Zealand gave a K-Ar date of 270,000 to 3.5 million years, a Rb-Sr date of 133 million years, a Sm-Nd date of 200 million years, and Pb-Pb dates of 3.9 billion years [as opposed to just 67 years]”. – Vernon R. Cupps, P.H.D. The Iconic Isochron: Radioactive Dating, Part 2. Acts and Facts, 43 (11), 2014

This means that without knowing what the ancient atmosphere was like, and not taking into consideration ancient volcanic activity, our dates concerning cabon dating of ancient bones and materials could be completely unreliable.

A Fresh Look at the Genesis Account

Now that we have addressed any potential concerns and objections, and established a new creational paradigm based on the textual evidence, what do we now see in Genesis when compared to the secular timetable?

What we now see is something that much more closely resembles the secular table. Understanding the meaning of the verses in their original language, along with considering the taxonomical framework of the original authors, we then see that everything lines up very neatly.

The account begins with the creation of the heavenly bodies, space, stars, sun, etc. The Earth is formed desolate, and then water is put upon the Earth. Simple cells are present on Earth and remain in a simplistic primeval state. The Earth is dark from a thick smoggy atmosphere, light eventually penetrates through from the sun, then the atmosphere begins to clear, resulting in an overcast sky, but enough light to determine day and night.

With the increasing light, this then enables the slow development of cellular photosynthesis. The waters from the surface begin to part, to be separated into an atmospheric layer on the planet, carrying the earliest oxygen up into the air. Eventually seas are separated by rising land masses and water channels, (possibly with the aid of a theorised global glaciation, having an effect on the sea levels and water routes, though this is purely a theoretical premise and weight should not be put into this possibility).

Vapour begins to cover the Earth, resulting in a rich oxygenation of the planet and a watering or dewing of the ground. Next, the atmosphere clears, visually resembling its modern day form, the sun, moon and stars are made visible, being appointed as “signs for the times and seasons”.

Sea life bursts onto the scene, the Cambrian explosion happens, various fish and other sea creatures come into complex existence and multiply, resulting in plentiful variety born from inbuilt and intelligently designed adaptive mechanisms. Shortly, other variations of sea life follow, water breathing creatures with the ability to walk on land, early amphibians and reptiles, all likewise multiplying into variety.

Avian-dinosaurs, the earliest form of bird, are created upon the Earth. Likewise these diversify, flightless kinds along with flying kinds. Land animals shortly follow, armoured dinosaurs and other bulking quadrupedal creatures, followed up in turn by mammalian land creatures, of which many have survived to this present day.

At last, man and woman is made, and humanity begins its course.

Paradigm Wars: Why Trust Genesis over Darwinian Evolution?

From what we have reasoned so far, it would appear Genesis is not so “silly” as many opposers would like to claim.

Of course, the question still remains, “why should we believe this presented framework?”. After all, everything we have discussed here could be argued to be purely hypothetical, even with the evidence we have discussed.

What I’m not saying, is that science should be thrown out, or that there is no truth at all to the sciences or mechanisms of evolution and adaptation, but rather, that we should be aware of the limitations of such, and to admit where the science and the Bible can be shown to be friends, not foes.

The real question here, is less to do with the “hard evidence”, for we have plenty of evidence in the secular world of science that can fit both the Genesis narrative, and the evolutionary narrative. But rather, it’s a question of “what paradigm” the evidence best fits into. It is not a case of one side having a mountain of evidence against the other, for both have their assumptions, and both can be argued to have their flaws.

Framework is the core foundation here.  

Framework is the construct of which one either builds their story or idea around or fits ideas, evidences and observations into. An illustration one might use to understand framework is star constellations. In the night, one may see many scattered stars dotting the sky. Throughout history, many cultures have formed pictures out of the stars by drawing lines between them to form a shape. However, what one person may draw, will be different to what another would draw, as both are seeing two different images being presented to them by how they perceive what is in front of them.  

What does not change, however, are the stars themselves, they remain static and clearly tangible. Without the lines to connect the stars, it is but a field of plain white dots. When a person insists that a group of stars forms the shape of a fish and another says it’s a kite, they could be said to have differing frameworks of vision. Often this is the actual case as different cultures often hold different beliefs, and so when they observe the stars, they of course will see different things drawn in the sky that they personally associate with.  

A real-world example of this would be the “The Great Rift” dark cloud constellations. The Great Rift is a formation of various dark nebulas and dust clouds between our solar system and the “Sagittarius Arm” of the Milky Way galaxy. In Australian Aboriginal astronomy, this constellation is described as being “The Emu in the sky”, whereas in Inca astronomy, it is depicted as being a great river of which they named “Mayu” meaning “Celestial River”, which within contains many of their own native animals depicted in the stars. But which one is the accurate portrayal? That would depend on whom you ask, but what both groups would agree upon would be the plain appearance and positions of the constellations themselves. When it comes to perception and drawing the lines between dots, framework is an essential piece. 

Likewise, when it comes to theories, philosophies, religions, sciences and even conspiracies, framework also plays a huge role.  

With any subject of which requires investigation, a “hypothesis” must first be formed based on the observable data around you. In other words, a makeshift idea of what you think the surrounding evidence is telling you.

If I walked into an empty house and saw a red carpet stain, I could conclude it was red wine that had been spilled, or I could assume it was blood. My hypothesis begins by taking into account what is around the area or what I already know about the area. In this case I know that a couple lives together in this building, additionally I have heard rumours from the neighbours that the husband was an alcoholic. “There you go then, it’s wine”, you might conclude, but then I also learn that the husband had violent tendencies and often abused his wife, it was even overheard one day during a fit of rage that he was going to kill her. Well, that puts a new spin on the situation. Is it wine or is it blood?  

What would happen then would of course be chemical analysis, forensics and so on, but for the sake of simplicity, this was a short example of the formation of a hypothesis, using data to form ideas of what one is looking at. Usually, however, a hypothesis will then develop into a “theory”. A theory operates on proven tangible facts and then seeks to draw the lines between those facts. Forensics were done, it was proven to be blood, they found a stained knife in the cupboard, we know there was a violent attack, now begins our theory of what exactly happened based upon the collective of hard facts that we have in front of us. As we have proof that it is an attack, all pieces in the home become inserted into a framework, a framework of a murder scene. “How does this relate to that, in the context of this murder scene”? 

In the case of evolution, one would describe it as a theory based upon tangible evidence. In other words, DNA, fossils and sedimentary rock layers and micro-changes observed in nature during our time (small, non-transformative adaptations within a single species in response to its environment) would be the “stars” of our constellation. These are the things that are in plain sight and are what they are. But of course, there are parts missing. The observation of macro-changes (a macro-change being the transitional mutation of one species becoming entirely another) on fossil record, the inability to replicate it, or observe it in real time.

Any genuine evolutionist will tell you, and what can already be quoted by many, is that what we have are lines of fossils of fully formed creatures across spans of generations, but no forms of fossils which show one creature slowly mutating into another from point A to point Z, only what is assumed to be a “transitional form” later down the line in certain layers of the Earth.  

Minimal Facts of the Matter

The most fundamental facts are these.

We have many glaring objections against the Darwinian worldview of macro-evolution, these not being limited to:

• The mystery of the sudden appearance of sea life via the Cambrian explosion (which even learned men such as Professor Richard Dawkins admits is a hard nut to crack)
• The issue of irreducible complexity and top down design (a cell cannot function without all its parts in unison, making the evolution of each part of a funtional cell individually impossible)
• The fact that genetic mutations only form from either rearrangement, duplication, or a loss of pre-existing infomation, requiring there to be multiple simultaneous genes and functions to begin with (as admitted by athiest professors).
• Mutations have not been demonstrated to give rise to new species, only varities of existing ones (as also admitted by athiest professors).
• There isn’t enough time for life to evolve by itself to its current complex state and variation (as also admitted by athiest professors)
• The assumption of connections between life forms that aren’t actually tangibly proven
• Genetic entropy (that experiments have shown that mutations typically lead to neutral change or loss of functionality, not gain).

On the other hand, what many opposers have mocked for hundreds of years in the Bible, over time slowly keep being vindicated, both historically and in some cases scientifically:

• The Bible went against all other global cultures at the time in its creation account
• The Bible stated the universe appeared from nothing, counter to what was believed for thousands of years up until the early-modern day (1920s).
• The Bible teaches life began in the sea and ended at mankind, something taught in evolutionary science
• The Bible teaches there were atmospheric shifts and events during its early stages
• The Bible teaches all mankind originated from two humans, now proven genetically
• The Bible’s chronology teaches that modern mankind and civilisation began some time 8000-4000 B.C.E, this being confirmed by historians and archaeologists, the explosion of human culture and development being evident from that era of time
• The Bible speaks of things that man did not discover until thousands of years later (ie; roundness of the Earth, springs of the sea, locked away oceans, space is expanding, etc)

The Bible has always claimed that the universe came into existence from nothing, whereas the general consensus of the “higher educated” such as the ancient Greeks, up until recent times, was that the universe always existed. The earliest creation accounts from other religions describe the Earth as “hatching from an egg”, or being the result of a god ejaculating into the universe (no, that’s not a joke).

What was also mocked for years was the idea that all humans alive today came from two humans, but now, even that has been accepted as a “genetic” fact.

Thus, even if one did not agree with my proposed presentation here in this article concerning the interpretations of Genesis, it cannot be denied that the order of animal creation in the Bible still has the closest resemblance to modern secular science out of any ancient historical creational account ever recorded.

Therefore, if this is the ongoing track record of the scriptures, we come to a point where we have to stop, pause, think, and start asking ourselves some serious questions… that maybe there is more to these texts than meets the eye.