Creation Questions and Answers

Posted on June 20, 2007

Genesis 1:1-3

Genesis one is a fascinating and very crucial chapter of the Bible. There has been so much to say that I’ve had to trim and cut before preaching the Sunday messages. I wanted to use this Wednesday evening study to go back and highlight some of those issues that we had to skip and then take some questions and answers about the chapter.

I.          Reviewing the “Theories” of Genesis 1:

A.         The “Gap” Theory – suggests that there is a gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 that could possibly consist of billions of years of evolutionary ages and could include all of the geologic column’s development (the fossil record). This theory was never thought of until a century and a half ago. It was likely, at least in part, a reaction to Darwinism. Reasons I’m not too favorable of this theory:

1.                  It seems to be a reaction to evolutionary thought, an unnecessary concession.

2.                  It reads a huge amount of unwritten information into the text.

3.                  It would not have been understood this way by the ancient Hebrew people.

4.                  It expands on the subject of creation more than the Holy Spirit intended.

B.         The Pre-Adamic Catastrophe or Chaos Theory – suggests that there is a gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 that merely includes the creation and fall of Lucifer and the other angels. It is different from the gap theory in that it does not allow for any human or animal life, merely the fall of Satan. Reasons I like this theory:

1.         The rest of the creation story, after verse 2, primarily speaks of making or shaping creation, rather than creating ex nihilo (from nothing).

2.         Isaiah 45:18 does declare that God did not create the world “formless and void,” which is its condition in Genesis 1:2.

3.         Satan’s creation and fall had to occur before the fall of man. Moses simply does not include it anywhere in the creation narrative.

C.         The Day-Age Theory – suggests that the word “day” (yom) in Genesis 1 refers to indeterminate lengths of time rather than literal 24-hour periods. Reasons why I really don’t like this theory:

1.                  It’s a concession of the possibility of evolution, which is bad science and bad theology.

2.                  The word yom is almost always a literal day, as in Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

3.                  The phrase “evening and morning” seem to indicate the passing of a daily cycle.

4.                  Ancient Hebrews would have understood it to mean a literal day.

II.         The Creation of the Physical Universe.

Five words are given to the stars: “he made the stars also.” (Genesis 1:16) Yet the universe is so vast. Here is one article from Answers magazine…

            Counting the Stars (First Published, Creation 19(2):10–13, March 1997)

by Werner Gitt

The total number of individual stars visible in both the northern and the southern celestial hemispheres is about 6,000. Thus, on a clear night one can see at most 3,000 stars at the same time. Is that all? With the advent of telescopes, very many previously unknown stars were discovered. Galileo (1564–1642), using his homemade telescope, saw a ten-fold increase in the number of visible stars, up to 30,000…

Today, the local Milky Way galaxy (of which our sun is a part) has been found to contain 200,000 million stars. What an astounding result! If somebody could count three stars per second, after 100 years he would have counted less than five percent of this number…

Can we really grasp such an immense size? And this is not the only galaxy. With the naked eye we can see three more, namely the two Clouds of Magellan near the southern celestial pole, and the Andromeda galaxy in the constellation of the same name. The Andromeda galaxy is thought to be 2.25 million light-years from us.1

Its total light emission is equal to 2,500 million times that of the sun. However, at this distance stars (as opposed to galaxies) having the same luminosity (light output) as the sun can no longer be proved to exist by the use of optical telescopes. The Andromeda galaxy is the most distant object in the universe that can be seen by the naked eye, except for the occasional supernova.

Numerous other galaxies have been discovered by means of the prolonged exposure of photographic plates. The total number discovered thus far is probably in the region of several hundred thousand million, and it may even amount to a few million million.

The total number of stars in the observable universe is estimated to be 1025 (1 followed by 25 zeros). Nobody knows the actual number.

III.        The Creation of Species.

We can get different kinds of oranges by cross-pollination, but an orange never produces an apple because the genetic structure can’t change, it can only mutate or adapt. We can create new breeds of dogs by mixing two breeds together and awakening dormant attributes within the genetic code, but we can never produce a cat from a dog.

Problems with evolution…

A.         The Fossil Record – does not yield any proof of any transitional forms of any species. Here is what Charles Darwin said about the fossil record, “Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against my theory.” (Chapter 10, paragraph 1 of Origin of Species)

B.         The Uniformity of the Animal Kingdom… There are certain animals that can reproduce asexually, but there is not a species in the animal kingdom that presents two sexes, always male and female.

C.         The complexity of the human body. One of the major ideas of evolution is that parts of animals that don’t have a purpose are eliminated through natural selection and the survival of the fittest. In other words, every part of a person or an animal has a job. If it doesn’t have a job, it falls off. This, however, does not account for how all of our functional parts came to be. The eye, with its complexity and its many parts, was said by evolutionists to begin as a sensitive spot and evolved into the eye over hundreds of thousands of years. But why didn’t it fall off during those years before it had any function?

Darwin also knew that for his theory to stand as true, no organ could ever be discovered anywhere that was irreducibly complex. In other words, if the human eye could not function without any single one of its many parts, then it could not have been produced one step at a time. He, and modern evolutionists, have no explanation for what first caused the eye to begin to be sensitive to, and even be able to interpret photons of light.

All of our arguments for and against creation are answered by all of Job 38. In summary, God says to Job, “Where were you when I created the earth?… Did you set the boundaries of the sea?… Do you keep the stars in their courses?…” None of us can claim to have been an eyewitness to the origin of all things. And certainly none of us has the power to do, with science, what only God could do in His infinite power. The great question remains, have we bowed ourselves before Him?