cphil_create2
THE PROBLEM OF CREATION
CONTINUED
by Ray Shelton
III. CONCLUSION
The Bible teaches that God’s work of creation was all accomplish in six days of the creation week, whereas evolution teaches that the process of evolution or the formation and development of plants, animals, and man, has been going on for billions of years in the past and is still going on in the present. These two views of the origin and present state of the biological and anthropological world could not be more starkly different. The attempt to reconcile these two views can only be accomplish by modifying the Biblical view so that the resulting view of origins is more evolution than creation.
The two most basic laws of all the laws of modern physical sciences are the laws of thermodynamics. The first law of thermodynamics is the law of energy conservation, affirming that although energy can be transformed from one form to another, the total amount remains unchanged and constant; that is, energy is neither being created or destroyed at the present time. The second law of thermodynamics states that, although the total amount remains unchanged, there is a tendency for it to become less available to perform useful work. That is, in any closed mechanical system in which work is being accomplished through energy conversion, the “entropy” increases, where entropy is essentially a mathematical formulation of the non-availability of the energy the system. Thus thermodynamics operates with the two master concepts of energy and entropy, and with the two laws of thermodynamics. These two laws provide the very foundation upon which the great superstructure of modern science and technology is built. All the various geological processes as well as other physical, chemical and biological processes operate in accordance to these two laws. In none of them is any energy or matter (matter regarded as a form of energy according to the theory of relativity) being created. [1]
The Biblical view is in accord with the laws of physics and chemistry, and in particular with the two laws of thermodynamics: the law of the conservation of energy and the law of increasing entropy. The conservation law, implies that nothing is being created now, because the amount of energy in the universe is constant, and energy is not being added to the universe or being removed from the universe. The Biblical view is that creation was completed at the end of the sixth day.
“1 Thus the heavens and earth were finished, and all the hosts of them. 2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.” (Gen. 2:1-2 KJV).
And God’s work of creation is always spoken of in the past tense as having been completed. The Apostle John, speaking of the Word of God, the Son of God, writes,
“All things came into being by Him; and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.” (John 1:2 NAS).
The Apostle Paul says, also speaking of the Son of God,
“16 For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, or dominions or rulers or authorities — all things have been created by Him and for Him. 17 And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.” (Col. 1:16-17 NAS).
This finished work of creation implies that energy is not being created; but this does not mean that energy cannot be transformed into different forms.
During the six days of creation of the earth, both matter and energy were being transformed. That is, in those six days the newly created matter and energy were being organized into highly complex and energized systems, which is in contrast to the present time during which no such organization is taking place. And this also stands in contrast to evolution that affirm that new complex life forms are evolving from simplier life forms and ultimately out of non-living matter. One school of evolutionists believes that the first life forms evolved out of non-living chemicals in a primeval “soup” perhaps 3 million years ago. Another school of evolutionist believes that life evolved out of clay minerals in primeval lands. Then perhaps billion of years ago, multi-celled invertebrate marine animals somehow evolved from one-celled organisms in the oceans. Eventually marine vertebrates (fish) evolved, then amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and birds in that order. Finnally two million years ago, man (at the stage of the genus Homo) evolved from some as-yet-uncertain “hominid” ancestor. And this evolution is continuing today. This outlines essentially the current evolutionary scenario advocated by most evolutionary biologists and paleontologists today.
But this order does not at all correspond to the account given in Genesis 1. The Biblical account indicates that all land plants were made on the third day, whereas the marine organisms were not created until the fifth day of the creation week. (The evolutionist say that the land plants, especially fruit tree, evolved long after fish and other marine animals.) The Genesis account also says that the birds were created at the same time as the fish and marine organisms. And according to the Genesis account, the “creeping things” (a term that includes insects according to Lev. 11:20-23; evolution has the insects evolving earlier.) were the last things created just before man on the sixth day (Gen. 1:25-26). This order contradicts the order of evolution as usually taught. The Biblical order of plants before animals is obviously so that the plants would provide food for the animals. According to Genesis, the sun and moon was not created until the fourth day. Some have argued that this would have been lethal to the plants created on the third day, because their photosynthesis depends upon light. But there was light; God created light on the first day and that light does not depend upon the sun as its only source.
To try to equate the days of the creation week recorded in Genesis with the geological ages, as does the “day-age” interpretation of the creation week, is not possible; there are too many inconsistencies between the two for any such device to be acceptable except for one who has put his unconditional faith in the geological ages. And as we have already pointed out previously, the Hebrew word (yom) refers usually to a literal 24-hour day, except for Gen. 2:4. In Genesis 2:4, the Hebrew word yom is used to refer to all of the six days of creation:
“These are the generations of the heavens and earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and heavens.” (Gen. 2:4 KJV)
The word “day” here refers to all of the six days of creation, thus, it is argued that the word “day” refers to a period of time and not to a literal 24-hour day. Warranty for this interpretation is also thought to be found in II Pet. 3:8, “… one day is with the Lord as a thousand years.” (Compare, Psa. 90:4).
But the word “day” in Genesis one does not refer to a long period time or age, because there is in the Hebrew a word that means an “age”, a long indefinite period of time (olam). And this Hebrew word is not used in Genesis one. In Genesis one, the context of the word “day” precludes any indefinite long period of time: “the evening and the morning”. And the conclusive proof that the “days” of Genesis does not refer to day-ages is the fourth commandment of the Ten Commandments (Ex. 20:8-11).
But there are instances where the Hebrew word yom does not refer to a period of time but to the time when a event occurs, such as “the day of the Lord.” (Joel 3:14; see also Amos 5:18-20; 1:14; Hosea 1:5; Lam. 2:1; Isa. 61:2; Psa. 110:3; 95:8; Gen. 35:3). In Gen. 2:4, the word “day” (“in the day that the Lord God created the earth and heavens.”) must have this meaning; it refers to the time of the event of creation, not to the period of time, either a literal 24 hour day or an age. In Genesis one, the context of the word “day” precludes reference to any period of time: “there was evening and there was morning” (Gen. 1:5). The period of time from evening to morning is not a 24-hour day, but refers to the beginning and the end of the event. This is clearly shown in Gen. 1:5 where God called the light Day and the darkness called Night.
“2 And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. 3 And God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, day one.” (Gen. 1:2-5 ERS)
The “evening” is the beginning of the event (when “God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.”) in which there exists the condition (“the darkness”) to be changed by the event; and the “morning” is after the event at the end of which the condition of night (“the darkness”) has been changed to day (“the light”). This event is “day one”. And the other days of Genesis one is also events (“And there was evening and there was morning, a second day” Gen. 1:8 NAS; see also Gen. 1:13, 19, 23, 31).
The statement of II Pet. 3:8 (“…that one day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day”) does not teach an equivalence of a day to a thousand years, thus a period of time, an age. This language is not metaphorical but is a statement of reality. God has time, but His time is not our created time. God’s uncreated time is absolute time; it has no beginning nor end. But it is not our created relative time. Just as God created space (the heavens and the earth), He created time. Newton’s mistake was that he identified relative created time with God’s absolute time. What the theory of relativity shows us is the true character of created time as relative and Newton’s mistake in absolutizing it. The complications introduced by Augustine’s view of God as timeless are thus now removed. Augustine had borrowed the Neo-Platonic concept of God (the one Being) as timeless, and interpreted it as an “eternal now”, without a before or an after, without a beginning or an end. This solution of Augustine’s has raised many problems: for example, if God is timeless, then how could the Son of God (the second person of the Trinity) become a man and enter into time? And how could God make a decision of His will to create the heavens and the earth?
“Worthy art thou, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for thou didst create all things, and by thy will they existed and were created.” (Rev. 4:11)
In any decision of the will, there is a before and an after the decision. If God is timeless, then how can there be a before and after the decision to create? To these complications of Augustine’s solution of God’s relation to time that God is timeless, Christian theology has usually declared that they are mysteries beyond our human understanding. But instead of retreating into mysteries, why didn’t Christian theology recognize that these complications were produced by the Greek and Neo-Platonic philosophical view of God as timeless, and to reject this view of God and Its relation to time? Again, the Greek view of God is a Super-It, and things, even super-its, can not make decisions because they do not have wills. Persons do have wills, and in fact their existence is in their decisions. “I choose, therefore I am.” Choices involve time; there is a before the decision, the now of the decision, and an after the decision. Since God has revealed Himself as three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, time must exist in God; God is not timeless. But God’s time is not our created time. The statement of II Pet. 3:8 makes this clear. When God decided to create the heavens and the earth, there was in God’s time a before and after the execution of the decision to create, but that act of creation was the beginning of our created relative time. And in the incarnation, the Son of God decided in His absolute time (in eternity) to take upon Himself our relative created time. II Pet. 3:8 does not teach that a day of our relative time is equal to a thousand years of our relative time, but that God’s absolute time is not our relative time; that is, there are two dimensions of time, God’s uncreated time and our created time.
God created an ordered world; the inhabitants of this world were created to reproduce “after their kind”. This phrase occurs ten times in the first chapter of Genesis. Every created “kind” (Hebrew, min) was to reproduce after its own kind and not to generate some new kinds. This allows for “horizontal” variation within limits of its kind. For example, there could be different varieties of dogs or human beings: the races of people. But what was precluded was the “vertical” variation from one kind to some other higher kind, for example, from monkeys to men. This truth of order is stressed again in the New Testament in I Cor. 15:38-39 (NAS).
“38 But God gives it a body just as he wished, and to each of the seeds a body of its own. 39 All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one flesh of men, and another flesh of beasts, and another flesh of birds, and another flesh of fish.”
The created world allows for variation but not the complete randomness and purposelessness of evolution. Evolution is naturalism which by definition denies the supernatural and God and tries to explain everything without God and in terms of the natural and the material. The theory of evolution has a fatal flaw right at the beginning; it is impossible to account for the origin of life in the first place. The popular notion of spontaneous generation was demolished by Louis Pasteur and others back in the nineteenth century. But the evolutionist still cling to the idea of “abiogenesis,” the imaginary gradual development of complex molecules from the basic elements until they finally become replicating molecules, which they then assumed to be alive. Despite the much media-induced misunderstanding on this subject, no replicating molecules has ever been synthesize from non-living chemicals in the laboratory, despite multitudes of costly experiments attempting to do so. Yet the evolutionists imagine that they can accomplish this by highly trained scientists with costly equipement in artifically controlled environment, what somehow occured by blind chance a billon years ago. The chance of life in the the simplest form happening by accident is infinitesimally small. The famous mathematical astrophysicist, Sir Fred Hoyle, recently argued that the probability that this could happen even once in the entire history of the universe is roughly equivalent to the probability that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard would assemble a Boeing 747. The intense search for even the slightest trace of life elsewhere in the universe reflects the wishful hope that the evolutionary theory will be vindicated by evidence that life developed on other planets or in interplanetary space. As yet, despite the space probe to Mars, deep space radiotelescopes, even the UFO furor, the idea of extraterrestial life remains science fiction, and nothing else. There is not the sightest evidence of biological life as we understand it anywhere else in the universe. Only an evolutionary view of the universe as blind chance sustains this belief of life elsewhere in the universe. From the standpoint of the evolutionist, it is necessary to postulate some form of spontaneous generation or abiogenesis as the source of life, for otherwise they will have to assume a Creator. Thus they continue to believe in a naturalistic origin of life by blind faith and against infinite odds, and not by scientific evidence at all.
The second law of thermodynamics states that in any closed system entropy increases. Entropy is defined as measure of the unavailability of the energy to do work. The first law of thermodynamics says that the amount of energy within a system is constant and cannot be created or destroyed; that is, energy can be converted from one form of energy to another but not created or destroyed in the system; energy is conserved. The second law says that amount of energy available for the conversion into useful form is decreasing. The quantity of energy remains the same but the quality of the energy is degrading as energy changes take place in the system. This second law applies to all physical and biological systems. Since all biological system involve energy conversions, there is an ever decreasing availablity of useful energy for maintaining the biological processes, such as movement and reproduction. Since the universe is a closed system, this second law of thermodynamics applies to the whole universe. This law of increasing entropy is responsible for the fact that no machine is 100 percent efficient and that it is impossible to construct a perpetual motion machine. Nearly all the earth’s available energy comes from the sun, but most the sun’s tremendous amount of energy is dissipated into space in the form of unrecoverable heat energy. This prodigious waste of energy cannot go on forever. Eventually, barring some supernatural intervention, the sun must burn itself out, and then all activity on earth will cease as well. The same applies to all the stars in the universe, so that the physical universe is running down and will eventually die a heat death. So the second law of thermodynamics is the law of death.
But this law implies that the universe had a definite beginning when all energy was available for use. If it is growing old, then it must have been once young; if it is wearing out, then it must have been new once; if it is running down, then it must have been originally “wound up.” Thus this law of energy degradation implies there was a beginning and that there was something or someone with that energy to begin the universe. The Scriptures tells us who that was; “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Gen. 1:1). And Scriptures also describes the second law of thermodynamics;
“25 Of old hast thou laid the foundations of the earth; and the heavens are the work of thy hands. 26 They shall perish, but thou shalt endure: yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment: as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed: 27 But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end.” (Psa. 102:25-27 KJV).
There are many similar passages in the Bible; for example, Rom. 8:20-22 (NAS).
“20 For the creation was subjected in futility, not of its own will, but because of Him who subjected, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.”
Thus the Scriptures teach us what only science in the past hundred years or so, has discovered; that is, in spite of the original creation, the universe is aging and is heading inexorably toward an ultimate physical death. That is not the way God originally created the universe; it was good and alive. But something happened. And that was the fall of man that brought death, not just for man but for the universe. The second law of thermodynamics expresses the law of death for the universe. After God created man, He gave a commandment;
“16 … From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; 17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Gen. 2:16-17, NAS).
After the woman had been created, she was tempted by the serpent (Gen. 3:1) who is also called Satan (the adversary) and devil (the slanderer, Rev. 12:9). The serpent’s temptation contained two lies: “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?” (Gen. 3:1, NAS) and “You surely shall not die!” (Gen. 3:4, NAS). The first lie attacks God’s goodness indirectly by implying that God makes unreasonable demands. The serpent misstates God’s command. And the woman corrects the serpent’s misstatement but accepts his insinuation that God makes unreasonable demands. This is the reason she changes God’s command by adding “neither shall you touch it” (Gen. 3:3). This leads to the serpent’s second lie. For if it is unreasonable to forbid touching the fruit, then it is unreasonable to think that she would die if she touched it. The second lie attacks God’s goodness directly by implying that He is untruthful. This second lie is supported by the implication in verse five that God is withholding something good from them: “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
These lies are attacks on God’s goodness and love. This is the first element of this satanic temptation: Satan begins with an attack on God’s character. God’s goodness is attacked indirectly and then directly. The second element of this satanic temptation is the offering of a substitute for the true God – a false god, an idol (compare Matt. 4:8-10). Having undermined her faith and confidence in the goodness of God, the serpent offers Eve the knowledge of good and evil as a substitute for God. The third element in this temptation is the presenting of a method to obtain the substitue god. Satan implied that this knowledge of good and evil could be obtained through the process of eating. This was part of Satan’s strategy. He had to obscure the basic fact that knowledge, moral as well as scientific, is obtained by decision, a choice, an acceptance or rejection. Adam and Eve could have known good and evil by their acceptance of the good (obeying God’s command) and their rejection of the evil (Satan’s temptation to disobey God’s command). Evil may be equally known in its rejection as in its acceptance. Rejection is a far better way to know evil, for one does not have receive the painful consequences of the choice of evil. The knowledge of good and evil was not something that God was trying to keep from them, contrary to Satan’s lie. God was trying to give to them in the only way possible, by decision, by a choice between good and evil. Of course, it was necessary for Satan to obscure this fact that knowledge comes by decision. Otherwise there would be no necessity for eating of the fruit of the tree and thus disobeying God.
At the serpent’s suggestion Eve ate of the tree and gave to her husband, Adam, who also ate (Gen. 3:6). Thus did man first sin. What was the nature of Eve’s sin? Was it disobedince, unbelief, rebellion, or a transgression? It was all of these, but also something more. It was not merely something negative but something positive. It was idolatry. In Genesis 3:6, the Biblical explanation of Eve’s sin is given:
“So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband and he ate.” (Gen. 3:6)
The woman saw it was good for food – she had probably observed this many times before; we have no record that the serpent told her that. She saw that it was a delight to the eyes. She had surely noticed this before also. Neither of these appeals had previously made this fruit a temptation to her. It was the third element that made it a temptation: It was a tree to be desired to make one wise. As was seen above, the serpent added this element (Gen. 3:5). This was not a temptation to pride as some have affirmed; it was a temptation to put wisdom and knowledge in the place of God. Eve’s sin was basically misplaced ultimate allegiance. It was not just unbelief but wrong faith: trust in that which is not God. The technical Biblical term for it is idolatry. The sin of the first woman was the choice of knowledge and wisdom, as her god. As important and good as knowledge is in its proper place, it is not supreme or ultimate; it is not God. Eve’s sin is basically an idolatry of knowledge. Since the word “science” basically means “knowledge”, this idolatry of knowledge may be called “scientism.” “And she gave some of the fruit to her husband and he ate.”
After the temptation by the serpent, the first man and his wife disobeyed God’s command and ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil; and they died, not physically on that day, but spiritually. This spiritual death is separation from God and from each other. They were ashamed that they were naked, and they hid themselves from God. (Gen. 3:7-11). Later they died physically (Gen. 5:5). This was the result of the curse that God put on the earth.
17 Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listen to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it.’ Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. 18 Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you shall eat of the plants of the field; 19 By the sweat of your face You shall eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken, For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.” (Gen. 3:17-19).
This act of God was the establishing of the second law of thermodynamics: it affected every aspect of the life of man and ultimately the entire universe. According to this law, “the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now” under “the bondage of corruption [or ‘decay’]” (Rom. 8:22, 21). Now there is an universal tendency from highly organized to disorganization. Never has there been an inherent, natural, undirected, unaided trend toward an increasing organized complexity. The natural tendency now is disorganization and degeneration. Prior to the curse, entropy did not increase and energy was conserved with the decay processes balanced by growth processes. But now decay and the tendency to disorganization predominates.
There are two great worldwide changes that God imposed on the original creation. The first was when He cursed the ground for man’s sake (Gen. 3:17). The second was when He was forced by their sin to say “…behold, I will destroy them with the earth” (Gen. 6:13). The first changed the basic nature of all processes by imposing a universal internal principle of decay on them; the second changed the structure of the earth’s atomsphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, and biosphere, as formed in the creation week, by a cataclysmic change in the rates and external behavior of those processes. The Curse introduced the universal tendency toward death; the Flood was the visitation of actual death that the world has experienced since the world began. [2] The Biblical Flood was the execution of the Curse and the application of the second law of thermodynamics. The Curse that God placed upon the earth (Gen. 3:17-19) was the establishment of the second law of thermodynamics and the Flood was the execution of that law. The Flood changed the original world that God had created. Before we examine the Biblical Flood and its effects, let us examine the Biblical account of the pre-flood world.
The world today is not the world that God originally created. The Flood changed that world and produced the world that we know today. In the world before the Biblical Flood, there was different environments from the present world and different groups of creatures lived in these different environments. The world that God originally created was “very good” (Gen. 1:31) and was vastly different from the present world. According to Gen. 2:5-6, there was no rainfall and a mist rose up “from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.” There were rivers; “Now a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it divided and became four rivers.” (Gen. 2:10). This river may have had a subterranean source, emerging from presurrized reservoirs below the earth’s crust through controlled springs; these may be the sources of “fountains of the great deep” that later errupted during the Flood (Gen. 7:11). Also after the Flood the rainbow appeared in the sky. Before the Flood the rainbow could not be formed, because the liquid rain droplets could not form to produce the rainbow; the water in the air before the Flood was in the form of a vapor and apparently did not form water droplets. On the second day of creation, Genesis 1:6-8 (KJV) says,
“6 Then God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. 8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and morning was the second day.”
The Hebrew word translated “firmament” literally means “expanse,” or “stretched-out” thinness or “space.” God called the expanse “Heaven” or “sky” (NIV). Some Bible scholars have thought that the waters under the firmament (the heavens or sky) are the subterranean source of the river that flowed out of Eden and later at the flood the source of the “fountains of the deep.” But the waters under the sky are not these subterranean springs. They were a vast blanket of water that covered the surface of the earth. For on the next day of creation God gathers them into into one place and the dry land appears. Genesis 1:9-10 (KJV) says,
“9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. 10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters, he called Seas: and God saw that it was good.”
Before this event, the waters under the heavens were a vast ocean covering the earth before God gathered them in one place and allowed the dry land to appear. This may have been done by lowering the earth under the place where the waters were to be gathered and raising the earth where the dry land was to appear. From the language in these verses, it appears that the dry land was all in one place, a single continent, as the waters of under the heavens were in one other place, one ocean.
The waters above the expanse or heaven may have been a vast world-wide canopy of water vapor above the earth’s atmosphere extending far out into space as a great protective blanket for the beautiful earth originally created by God as the home for man and animals. Such a water vapor canopy would have the affect that is described in the Scriptures and indicated in the geological record. It would have been invisible but it would have filtered out most of the cosmic and short-wave-length radiations that now reaches the earth. Even now the small vapor blanket that exist in our present atmosphere makes possible the existence of life on earth today. If these radiations are not at least partially screened out before reaching the surface of the earth, they would quickly destroy all life on earth. Before the flood the vast world-wide canopy screened out much more of that deadly radiation, so that the lives of man and the animals would be much longer, as indicated in the genealogies in Genesis chapter 5.
This canopy would also have produced a “green-house effect” much greater than that now exists, preventing extremes of hot and cold and resulting in an uniformly warm, probably subtropical climate all over the earth. The fossil bearing sedimentary rocks indicates that such a climate existed all over the earth in almost all of the so-called geologic ages. This essentially uniform warm temperature together with the earth’s smoother, gentler topography (low hills and no mountains) would have caused the earth’s meteorological conditions to be much different. High winds, storms, and hurricanes would be impossible, since there were no differences of temperature. Similarly, the great global atmospheric air mass movements that sustain the present hydrological cycle would have been impossible, and heavy rains could never occure, as mentioned in Gen. 2:5. All over the globe the mist would water the earth by daily local evaporation and transpiration, with nightly cooling and condensation. There would be no arctic ice fields nor deserts anywhere on earth. This daily mist would have kept the earth everywhere in a comfortable state of humidity and would have provided ample moisture (together with the artesian-spring-fed rivers) to sustain lush vegetation and abundant animal life everywhere. The warm waters of the narrow, shallow network of “seas” everywhere (Gen. 1:10) would also have sustained a thriving complex of marine life all over the world. The world was indeed “very good” (Gen. 1:31) as God had originally created it.
As is well known, biological mutations are largely caused by radiation. Genetic mutation cause deterioration in future generations of the biological kinds that experience them, thus accounting for decrease in size, viability, and even extinction of many animals. Also somatic mutation (in the body cells) cause deterioration and evenual death of individual creatures experiencing them. These somatic mutations may also be directly related to longevity. The radiation-free environment of the antediluvian world may been at least one factor contributing to the long lives of antediluvian patrirachs and the large size of the antediluvian animals.
The Biblical Flood was a world wide cataclysm; it was neither local nor tranquil. The Biblical deluge was both terrestial and atmospheric in nature. Tremendous torrents of water poured from the skies all over the world for forty days and forty nights. At the same time, all “the fountains of the deep” broke open, implying great subterranean and subaqueous disturbances, probably causing great geologic movements of the earth and great tsunami waves, ejecting great amount of water and magmatic materials on the earth. This may be when the original one continent (Gen. 1:9-10) split into the present six continents, by the plate tectonics that is called Continental Drift. It was not a drift, but a rapid movement as “the fountains of the deep” errupted. The rupture of the original continent was followed by a rapid spread of the floor of the oceans that were formed, the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Mountain ranges were formed along the western sides of the North and South American continents as they were pushed away from Europe and Africa toward the west. The Indian sub-continent breaking off from the one original continent would crash into the southern edge of the Asian continent pushing up and forming the Himalaya Mountains. Then there was gradual deceleration to the present zero or near-zero drift. All over the continents the waters above or the vast world-wide canopy would be pouring down on them as rain and gigantic tsunami waves from the moving continents would sweep over them.
Such a flood would not pile all kinds of creatures together hetergeneously throughout the world. Rather, it would have drown them together, transported them together, and deposit them together with the assemblages of creatures living together. Thus, two or more strata might be deposited together simultaneously but containing different groups of future fossils because of their different sources and directions of transport and final locations.
Such a flood would obviously affect first and bury deepest the creatures inhabiting the deep oceans, then those in shallower waters. Then the waters and disturbed sediments would overtake the amphibians and land-bordering creatures. Above these would be buried swamp, marsh, and low river-flat creatures, especially reptiles. Higher mammals would be able to retreat from the rising waters to some extent, but also would eventually be drowned and buried in the sediments. Finally, men and women, the chief objects of the flood, would be overtaken and drowned. There may have been exceptions to this order, but the order would be that usually found in the fossil record. Thus, the fossil deposits do not represent the evolution of life over the ages but rather the destruction of life of the age that preceded the Flood.
Many other factors could modify this general arrangement, depending upon the local circumstances. Some strata might be reworked and redeposited, especially as lands rose as the floodwaters retreated at the end of the Flood. The processes of uplift of the still-plastic sediments would produce great faults and folds, and would open great fissures that might quickly become great canyons as massive volumes of water flowed down to the sea, like the Grand Canyon.
In the process of depositing successive strata of any given formation, with the same sources of sediment and prospective fossils, the factor of hydrodynamic sorting would work rapidly to sort the materials into objects of similar size, shape, and density. The simpler, denser, more streamlined organisms within a given kind would tend to settle out lower than the more complex, “advanced” individuals of that kind, thus, giving a superficial appearance of evolution within the boundaries of the formation.
The Scriptures do not say what was the antecedent cause of the Flood. There has been much speculation offered, but there is no way to test them. It has been suggested that the approach of an asteroid, or the titling of the earth’s axis, or a meteriorite bombardment, etc. caused the Flood. None of these can be verified from the Scriptures; according to the Scriptures, God Himself is the ultimate cause of this catastrophy. So it is best not to advocate any of them dogmatically. Whatever was the detailed cause and effects, the Biblical Flood was a devastating worldwide cataclysm that provides a fully adequate framework to explain known facts and data of geology and paleontology.
This is, of course, only a basic outline of the probable geological activity of the deluge. Further geologic formation would be done during the centuries of “residual catastrophism” after the Flood. Continuing volcanic and tectonic activity, intense storms, even the Ice Age and possible continental splitting and collisions are reasonable possibilities that could be inferred for the post-Flood centuries from the tremendous disruption of the atmospheric and terrestrial equilibria that existed before the Flood. [3]
When Noah and his family came out of the ark a year later, they saw a tremendously different world. No canopy of water vapor filtered and diffused any longer the sun’s ray and the rainbow appeared in the sky, assuring them that such a flood would never occur again. The waters above and below now occupied the vast oceans that now existed on the earth. Prior to the cataclysm of the Flood, the greenhouse effect precluded the formation of glaciers and ice-caps. But the dissipation of the canopy quickly established latitudinal differentials in temperature, that is, the global temperature zones: the arctic and antarctic, northern and southern temperate, and tropical zones. With the tremendous amount of moisture released from the canopy, much of it would be precipitated as snow in the polar regions. And this deluge of water would have removed much of the carbon dioxide from the air and lowered the temperature of the air. This combined with latitudinal differentials of temperature, these phenomena could have led to the development of the great continental ice-sheets of the Pleistocene Epoch.
Thus much of the water dumped on to the earth from the collapse of the canopy would be trapped in these tremendous continental ice-sheets thousands of feet thick and covering thousands of square miles of area. Along the boundaries with the warm regions around the earth’s equator, the ice-sheet would retreat in summer periods and advance in the winter periods. Of course, the winter and summer periods would be different in the northern hemisphere from those of the southern hemisphere. Thus there would be numerous advances and retreats of the edge of ice sheets over the long period of the ice age. Along this edge much erosion and disposition would take place with formations of meltwater rivers and lakes, actively reworking the true deluvial and glacial deposits. Superimposed on these yearly advances and retreats, there may be longer periods of glaciation. Those surviors of the Flood and their descendants living in temperate and especially sub-tropical areas would not be aware of these ice-sheets and would have little influence on their lives and cultures.
The Scriptures do not say anything about this ice-age, probably because it had no impact on the Biblical redemptive time line. But in the genealogy of Shem given in Genesis 10:22-26, a son of Eber, who was a son of Shem, “is named Peleg, because in his time the earth was divided” (10:25); the name “Peleg” means “division”. There has been much speculation concerning about what the phrase “the earth was divided” means. Some take this to mean the division of languages that occurred at the tower of Babel (Gen. 11:1-9). The King James translation of the last verse (32) of chapter 10 of Genesis reflects this view.
“10:32 These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations: and by these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood.”
But this interpretation is doubtful, because the division of languages is not the division of the earth. Then, what does the phrase “the earth was divided” mean? The answer to this question may be connected with the end of ice age. The ice age ended when the continental ice-sheets melted and “Where did all that water go?” It didn’t just evaporate, but it obviously would have flowed into the seas, and oceans. As the level of the water in these seas and oceans increased, the land-bridges would be covered and lands of the earth would be separated from each other and “the earth was divided.” This seems to be an obvious literal interpretation of that phrase.
But what caused the ice age to end? We don’t know exactly, and again there has been much speculation in historical geology about the answer to this question. Much geophysical and paleontological evidence has been brought to bear on this problem and there seems to be agreement that the ice age ended rather suddenly. And that was because there was a sudden increase in global temperature, a “global warming.” One view is that the carbon dioxide content in the air increased and thus increased the average temperature of the air. This is the same reason that is given for the current fear of global warming. But was it caused by burning of fossil fuels, coal, oil, and gasoline? That is doubtful. But there was a rapid increase in the number of animals and human beings on the earth after the Flood and that would have increased the carbon dioxide content of the air. And there is evidence of an increase in volcanic action at that time that would have also contributed to the carbon dioxide content. Some have even proposed that volcanic action was the main cause of the end of the ice age.
The question of the duration of geologic time is probably one of the most vexing problems confronting a geologist who believes the Bible. The evolutionary geologists insist that the earth is about five billion years old, that life evolved on earth probably three billion years ago, and human life on earth at least a million years ago. Yet the Bible seems to teach that that all things were created only about six thousands years ago. Chapters 5 and 11 of Genesis gives us genealogical lists from Adam to Noah (Gen. 5) and from Shem (Noah’s son) to Abraham (Gen. 11). Each of these lists gives the name of each patriarch and the age of each one when his son was born and his age when he died. If the son is taken to be next in line, then when the ages are added, they give a total of 1656 years from Adam to the Flood and 358 years from the Flood until Abraham migrated to Canaan. Abraham’s time is well within the period of recorded history. There is general agreement that Abraham’s migration occurred no earlier than 2000 B.C. Therefore, the date of the creation, obtained by the simple addition of these times, was about 2024 years before Abraham journeyed from Haran to Canaan, or about 4000 B.C. The date of the Flood on the same basis is about 2350 B.C. Click here for a summary of the traditional patriarchal chronology of the period from Adam to Abraham. Dates like these are considered by modern anthropologist to be quite absurd. These believe that man has been on the earth for at least a million years. The Flood is totally rejected altogether, except perhaps that they are an old tradition of a local Euphrates flood occurring around 3000 B.C.
The sharp disagreement of these dates based on the Genesis genealogies and of the speculations of evolutionary anthropology and archaeology, is a matter serious concern to the Christian scholars who believe that the Bible to be the Word of God. Some modern theologians that do not believe that the Bible is God’s word, consider Genesis 1 to 11 as mythology, rejecting its historical content altogether. This disagreement is therefore no problem to them. But to those scholars who believe that the events of Genesis 1 to 11 are historical have a problem reconciling that historical record with the evidences of anthropology and archaeology. This problem has led some to propose various theories about “pre-Adamite” men of the gap theory of Gen. 1:1-2. Others, who take these chapters as historical, consider three possible approaches to this problem.
a. First, it is suggested that in the transmission of the text the numbers have been corrupted by faulty transmission. The Massoretic text, on which the figures used in English translation is based, differs from the Septuagint and the Samaritan texts. The Samaritan text would add 301 years and the Septuagint text would add 1466 years to the period calculated above from creation to Abraham. This would extend the date of man’s creation back to 5500 B.C. at most. But this is no solution to the problem and does not meet the demands of the evolutionary chronology.
b. Others, knowing that the archaeological dating methods of pre-historic human sites are highly uncertain, involving a great number of unverifiable assumptions (as in radioactive techniques) and subjective evaluations (as in pottery correlations), all of which to some degree based on evolutionary presuppositions. Actually, proofs to contrary, the dates of the creation and of the Flood are quite reasonably placed within the past several thousand years.
c. Another approach is to assume that there are certain gaps in the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11, with the word “begat” in the lists implying ancestry rather than immediate parental relationship. There are a number of instances in the Scriptures where gaps can be found, for example, Matt. 1. Some taking this approach, assume that many individuals are omitted from the lists, the date of the Flood can be dated much earlier than 2350 A.D. and the creation dated much earlier than 4000 B.C. If there are such gaps, there is no way of knowing exactly how many have been omitted and thus the date cannot be determine from the Genesis text alone.
Others adopting this approach have put limits on the number of ancestors between the patriarchs. Harold Camping in his book Adam When? has proposed that the son born to a patriarch is the direct ancestor of the next patriarch, but not the direct son unless the phrase “called his name” (which in Hebrew is “qara shem“) is used, and that the year of the death of one patriarch is the year of the birth of the successor patriarch. For example, according to Gen. 11:16-17 (KJV),
“16 And Eber lived four and thirty years, and begat Peleg: 17 And Eber lived after he begat Peleg four hundred and thirty years, and begat sons and daughters.”
That is, when the patriarch Eber was 34, he “begat” the ancestor of the next patriarch, Peleg. And since Genesis does not record that Eber “called his name Peleg”, then Peleg was not necessarily the direct son of Eber. Since the name of the ancestor of Peleg was not essential to the record of the patriarchs, but only the names of the patriarchs, and to indicate that the patriarchs are related, they are not recorded. The important thing in this genealogy is that the patriarchal successor of Eber is Peleg, and that Peleg was the direct descendant of Eber, and that Eber at the age of 34 gave birth to person who was the progenitor of the Peleg line. And in the language of each entry in the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 there is a formula for calculating a chronology; that is, “‘A‘ lived x years and begat ‘B‘, and ‘A’ lived after he begat ‘ B‘ y years” and the sum (x + y) is the life span of the patriarch ‘A‘. And the year of death of patriarch ‘A‘ is the year of birth of patriarch ‘B‘. This holds for all the entries in the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 except where the phrase “called his name” occurs: Adam begetting Seth, Seth begetting Enosh, and Lamech begetting Noah.
Genesis 5:32 declares that Noah is 500 years old when he became the father of Shem, Ham and Japheth. These three sons of Noah were not all born at the same time; they were not triplets. Since Genesis 10:21 (KJV, NIV) refers to Japheth as the older brother of Shem, Shem must be the younger brother of Japheth and the older brother of Ham, since the descendants of Japheth are recorded first in chapter 10 of Genesis (and I Chron. 1:5-7). In Genesis 11:10, it is said that when Shem was 100 years old, he “became the father of Arpachshad two years after the flood.” Now Genesis 7:6 says, “And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth.” And since Noah was 600 years at the time of the flood and the birth of Arpachshad was two years after the flood, the birth of Arpachshad occurred in the six hundred and second year of Noah; that is, 600 + 2 = 602. Now this birth of Arpachshad occurred when Shem was 100 years old, then Shem must have been born when Noah was 502 years old; that is, 602 – 100 = 502. Now let us look at the birth of Abram. Genesis 11:26-28 (KJV) declares,
“26 And Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran. 27 Now these are the generations of Terah: Terah begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran, and Haran begat Lot. 28 And Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of Chaldees.”
And verse 31 continues,
“31 And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran his son’s son, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram’s wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there. 32 And the days of Terah were two hundred and five years: and Terah died in Haran.”
Although Genesis 11:26 indicates that all three of Terah’s sons, Abram, Nahor, and Haran, were born when Terah was 70 years old, this does not mean that all three of these sons of Terah were born at same time as triplets. This can be seen from the following. According to Genesis 11:32, Terah died in Haran at the age of 205 years. And according to Act 7:4b Abram left Haran after Terah’s death and, according to Genesis 12:4, Abram left Haran at the age of 75. Therefore Abram was actually born when Terah was 130 years old: 205 – 75 = 130. Thus Abram was not born at the same time as his brothers Nahor and Haran but after them; either Nahor or Haran was born when their father Terah was 70. My guess is that Haran was born first since he died first and Abram was born last, the youngest. In these genealogies, Abram is probably named first, as Shem was, because he was the important person in God’s plan of redemption for man.
Now let us compute the chronology from the division of kingdom at the death of Solomon to Adam. According to Edwin R. Thiele in his book The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951], the division of the kingdom at the death of Solomon took place in 931 B.C. Since Solomon reigned 40 years (I Kings 11:42) and began to building the temple in the fourth year of his reign (I Kings 6:1), this building began in 967 B.C. (931 + 36 = 967). This is a very important passage because it gives a time bridge to the Exodus from Egypt. According to I Kings 6:1 (NAS),
“Now it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the sons of Israel came out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the Lord.”
This time bridge of 480 years brings us to 1447 B.C. (967 + 480 = 1447) as the date of the Exodus from Egypt. And according Exodus 12:40-41 (NAS),
“40 Now the time that the sons of Israel lived in Egypt was four hundred and thirty years. 41 And it came about at the end of four hundred and thirty years, to the very day, that all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt.”
Jacob would have entered Egypt in 1877 B.C. (1447 + 430 = 1877). Since Jacob was 130 years old at this time (Gen. 47:9), he was born in 2007 B.C. (1877 + 130 = 2007). Since Isaac was 60 when Jacob was born (Gen. 25:26) and Abraham was 100 when Isaac was born (Gen. 21:5), then Abraham was born in 2167 B.C. (2007 + 60 + 100 = 2167).
Click on the Names to Reveal Dates
The father of Abraham, was 130 when Abram was born, then Terah was born in 2297 B.C. (2167 + 130 = 2297).
The ancestor of Terah, is 148 years after Terah’s birth (Gen. 11:24-25), Nahor was born 2445 B.C. (2297 + 148 = 2445).
The ancestor of Nahor, is 230 years after Nahor’s birth (Gen. 11:22-23), Segur was born 2675 B.C. (2445 + 230 = 2675).
The ancestor of Segur, is 239 years after Segur’s birth (Gen. 11:20-21), Reu was born 2914 B.C. (2675 + 239 = 2914).
The ancestor of Reu, is 239 years after Reu’s birth (Gen. 11:18-19), Peleg was born 3153 B.C. (2914 + 239 = 3153).
The ancestor of Peleg, is 464 years after Peleg’s birth (Gen. 11:16-17), Eber was born 3617 B.C. (3153 + 464 = 3617).
The ancestor of Eber, is 433 years after Eber’s birth (Gen. 11:14-15), Shelah was born 4050 B.C. (3617 + 433 = 4050).
Click on names to the right to continue
The ancestor of Shelah, is 438 years after Shelah’s birth (Gen. 11:12-13), Arpachshad born 4488 B.C. (4050 + 438 = 4488).
The ancestor of Arpachshad, died 502 years after the Flood (Gen. 11:10-11), the Flood occurred in 4990 B.C. (4488 + 502 = 4990).
Thus the Flood occurred 2693 years before Terah (4990 – 2297 = 2693).
Since the Flood occurred when Noah was 600 years old, then Noah was born in 5590 B.C. (4990 + 600 = 5590).
The father of Noah, was 182 when Noah was born (Gen. 5:28-31), Lamech was born in 5772 B.C. (5590 + 182 = 5772).
The ancestor of Lamech, is 969 years after Lamech’s birth (Gen. 5:25-27), Methuselah was born 6741 B.C. (5772 + 969 = 6741).
Click on names to the right to continue
The ancestor of Methuselah, is 365 years after Methuselah’s birth (Gen. 5:21-24), Enoch was born 7106 B.C. (6741 + 365 = 7106).
The ancestor of Enoch, is 962 years after Enoch’s birth (Gen. 5:18-20), Jared was born 8068 B.C. (7106 + 962 = 8068).
The ancestor of Jared, is 895 years after Jared’s birth (Gen. 5:15-17), Mahalalel was born 8963 B.C. (8068 + 895 = 8963).
The ancestor of Mahalalel, is 910 years after Mahalalel’s birth (Gen. 5:12-14), Kenan was born 9873 B.C. (8963 + 910 = 9873).
The ancestor of Kenan, is 905 years after Kenan’s birth (Gen. 5:9-11), Enosh was born 10778 B.C. (9873 + 905 = 10778).
Since Enosh was born 105 years after Seth’s birth (Gen. 5:6-8), Seth was born 10883 B.C. (10778 + 105 = 10883).
Since Seth was born when Adam was 130 years old (Gen. 5:3-5), Adam was created by God in 11013 B.C. (10883 + 130 = 11013).
In summary, Adam was created by God in 11013 B.C. and the Flood occurred in 4990 B.C. and Abraham was born in 2167 B.C. Thus the creation of Adam occurred 6023 years before the Flood (11013 – 4990 = 6023) and 8846 years before Abram was born (11013 – 2167 = 8846), and the flood occurred 2823 years before Abram was born (4990 – 2167 = 2823) and 6023 years after Adam was created by God (11013 – 4990 = 6023).
Click here for a summary of this patriarchal chronology of the period from Adam to Abraham.
These dates of the creation of the first man, Adam, and of the Flood agree with some of available archaeological evidence. The place and time of the beginning of the earliest great city civilization in the Mesopotamia valley as determined by secular evidence agrees well with these dates determined from the Biblical account in Genesis 5 and 11. Archaelogical evidence of the date of the origin of the earliest civilization is about 3700-3500 B.C., and agrees with the Biblical period from 3617 B.C., the birth of Eber, to 3153 B.C., the birth of Peleg. The date of 3700 B.C. is suggested by William Foxwell Albright [4] for the beginning of the earliest civilization, and this date is accepted by most archaeologists. Some other archaeologists suggest a later date of 3500 B.C. [5]
The events related to the Tower of Babel in all probability made their impact on the development of writing. The confusion of tongues in the plains of Shinar or Sumer sometime between 3153 and 2914 B.C. could well have been the catalyst that produced writing. Before this dramatic, civilization-splitting event, only one language was spoken in all the world. Verbal communication was easy and reliable. But then came this event that shook the very foundations of this great civilization. Men could no longer understand each other. They had to find a better way. Inventing symbols and putting them on clay tablets would provide a way of communicating although their spoken languages differed.
Archaeologist vary in their estimates as to when writing first began. Some choose the date as early as 3500 B.C., although the oldest cuneiform tablets which can easily be read, are dated to the time of 2800 B.C. In light of the small number of the tablets dating earlier than 2800 B.C., many archaeologists believe writing began several hundred years later than 3500 B.C. or about 3000 B.C. This brings up the interesting problem of the earliest date for the existence of some of the Biblical documents. It is certainly possible that early portions of the Genesis account may have existed on clay tablets at the time Moses put them together as the book of Genesis.
ENDNOTES
[1] Henry M. Morris and John C. Whitcomb, The Genesis Flood
(Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1961, 13th printing, 1970), p. 222.
[2] Henry M. Morris, ed., Scientific Creationism, General Edition,
Prepared by the technical staff and consultants of the Institute of Creation Research,
(San Diego, California: Creation-Life Publishers, 1974, 3rd ed., 1976.), p. 213.
[3] Henry M. Morris, Science and the Bible,
Revised and Updated
(Chicago: Moody Press, 1986), pp. 72-74.
[4] William Foxwell Albright, From Stone Age to Christianity
(New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1957), p. 32.
[5] M. B. Rowton, On the Cambridge Ancient History
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), pp. 57-58.