S2 E13 TRANSCRIPT
NATURALISM AND BIBLICAL CREATION COMPARED—PART 5
INTRODUCTION
Hello everyone and welcome to Spirit-Led Hope. My name is Glenn Erichsen, and in this episode, we are looking at:
NATURALISM AND BIBLICAL CREATION COMPARED—PART 5
This is the fifth and final episode comparing the sequence of the Creation account in the Bible to the beginnings of the universe and life presented by naturalistic science.
I want to remind everyone of something I said in the last episode. It is not my intent to answer every possible question about the beginnings according to the Bible or science. In this episode, for example, we are going to look at a few things that could justify multiple podcast episodes on their own, but that would take us away from the main intent of Season 2. My goal in Season 2 is to answer some of the important questions about Creation and to point you to areas for your own study.
DAY SIX
In the last episode we looked at Day 4 and Day 5, and now we move to the final day of Creation, Day 6. To look at Day 6, we are going to look at two separate accounts found in the book of Genesis. They are not separate accounts in the sense that they describe different events, but they describe the same event with each account supplying differing details.
Let us start with the account found in the first chapter of Genesis. This is part of what we read in Episode 8.
And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
Genesis 1:24-31
Now let us jump to the second chapter of Genesis where we read more about the Creation of humans. Again, this is not a separate event from what we just read, but here the writer of Genesis gives us an additional specific detail that explains that God breathed life into man.
From Genesis 2:7 we read:
--then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
Genesis 2:7
This is one of those topics I was alluding to earlier on which we could spend multiple episodes. What does it mean that man was formed from the dust of the ground? Did God scoop up some dust, shape it into a man, and breathe into it? I do not know. But let us set that aside for a minute and continue reading about the creation of the first woman.
If we continue reading in Genesis, we learn that this first man was named Adam and God gave Adam the privilege of naming all the animals. Let us start reading what happens next in Genesis 2: 20.
The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman because she was taken out of Man.”
Genesis 2:20-23
Now, with these verses, we have additional details about how the first woman, who we find out later is named Eve, how she was created. Putting everything together from Genesis chapters 1 and 2, we know that Adam and Eve were made in the image of God, and we have the additional information that each one of them was made by direct intervention from God. We may not know the specifics, but we know that God directly intervened to create them.
This little detail, of God’s intervention, is important. Some Christians and theists believe that God started the universe with just the right initial conditions and then walked away. But these verses? These verses say otherwise. We see that all other life has been made, and then God stepped in and did something special when he created Adam and Eve. In other words, God actively participated in the creation of humans.
Let us step back now and look at the bigger picture of Day 6. According to Genesis, this is the time when the “earth brought forth” more types of animals. Not everyone agrees on which animals should be included. Some Christians will argue that this is when all land animals came into existence. Others, because of the word translated as livestock, might put an emphasis on four-legged land mammals and animals that will co-exist and be domesticated by humans. We are not going to dig deeper into those details.
For our purposes, looking at the sequence of Creation, we see that on Day 6 we now have mammals, and two humans, and these two humans are made in the image of God.
As a final reminder, we are making a virtual chart comparing the Biblical Creation Days to the naturalistic account. Under the heading of Day 5, on the left side of our chart, let us list two bullet points for the Biblical account. For the first bullet point I am going to capture a generic statement that encapsulates a broad range of Christian beliefs.
· The “earth brings forth” more living creatures, livestock, and beasts of the earth.
· God creates man and woman in his image.
Now, what we have not totally defined, is what it means to be made in God’s image. All I am going to say here is that, for sure, it includes a spiritual component. Christians understand that God breathing life into Adam was an impartation of a spirit…this is what distinguishes humans from any other life form on Earth. And although the second chapter of Genesis does not specifically say that God breathed life into Eve, we know that both Adam and Eve were made in God’s image and so all humans, male and female, have a spirit.
When we summarize the naturalistic view for Day 6, on the right side of our chart we will also have two bullet points. For the naturalistic view, I am taking information from what we talked about in Episodes 7 and 12. As I have already pointed out in prior episodes, it is hard to pinpoint the exact timeline for all animals and which ones to include for a given Day in Genesis. There may be an overlap in the way I have presented the information, but here are the bullet points we will use for naturalism for Day 6.
· 150-225 million years ago, new birds and mammals appeared.
· 200,000 years ago, the first anatomically modern humans appeared.
The date of 200,000 years is sort of a middle-of-the-road date. There are many naturalistic viewpoints as to when humans came on the scene, but I think 200,000 years is a fair choice.
DAY 6 COMPARISON
When we look at the two sides of our chart for Day 6, the agreement is once again very clear. From a sequential perspective, advanced life continues to develop, and humans are very last in the sequence.
In the Biblical account, the development of new life forms stops after humans come on the scene. This is not the case for the naturalistic account, and we will talk more about that, in just a moment.
The most glaring difference in Day 6, is that the Bible says humans are made in the image of God. Naturalism denies the existence of any spiritual component. So not only does naturalism for Day 6 deny that humans have a spirit, but it also denies that God intervened in the development of human life to make them special.
Let us talk for a moment about the development of new life forms. Although we did not read it in this episode, Chapter 2 of Genesis states that God rested from his creative work after Day 6. Christians take this to mean that God no longer is actively making new types of life on the Earth.
Naturalism, on the other hand, says that new life forms should be constantly appearing due to what? Due to evolution and natural selection. Is that the case? Are we seeing continual new life forms appearing on the Earth? And here, we are not including life made from genetic engineering…which is something done through an intelligently guided action.
I tried to find a definitive naturalistic answer to that question and found that answers are all over the place. There are many scientific viewpoints that say new life forms can be observed emerging in real time, or over the span of millions of years. But this is where it comes down to what you consider a new life form. Is it a new species? And if it is, what defines a species? There are differing views on this. Or does a new life form have a new type of body plan? The definition you use for a new life form makes all the difference.
From a Christian perspective, animals and plants will naturally produce their “own kind.” I did not emphasize this earlier in the episode, but the Day 6 Biblical account, like the previous Days, says that the animals mentioned will “produce according to their kind.” We saw this throughout the Creation account. I mentioned in the last episode that the Creation account, for being so short, seems to spend a lot of ink letting us know that animals and plants produce according to their kind.
If you look at examples today where naturalistic scientists declare a new type of animal or plant has emerged, it will invariably be something categorized along with what produced it. A bacterium may evolve into a new type of bacterium, but it is still a bacterium.
Some naturalists may be surprised to learn that most Christians readily accept that animals change over time in what we call microevolution. Things like the changing beaks of birds or the colorization of moth wings, that fits perfectly well into the worldview of Christianity. Even hybridization of animals and plants fits well because we can see the contribution where each mating member produces according to its kind.
DAY SIX ODDS AND ENDS
Because our purpose here is to compare the Biblical Creation account with naturalism, we are not going to discuss every facet of what we read earlier for Day 6. But there are some interesting statements about humans that you may have heard and found surprising.
Not only did God specially create Adam and Eve, but he gave them specific instructions. God told them to procreate and have children so they could fill the earth. He also told them that they were to have dominion over all other life, and to subdue the earth. The Christian perspective on this is that humans were charged with being stewards of the Earth…to wisely manage it and treat it as a gift from God.
Interestingly, Adam and Eve were also told that plants and trees were to provide their food. Even animals were supposed to feed on plants. The original design of Creation was that all life fed on vegetation. It was this, that God pronounced very good.
So, what happened? Unfortunately, Adam’s sin caused a disruption in God’s good creation and the whole Earth and everything in it became distorted.
THE SEQUENCE CONCLUSION
Now that we have looked at the sequence of all six Days of Creation, what do we conclude? Here is the reality, if we look at the order of Creation, the Biblical and naturalistic accounts are very similar.
Recognizing, of course, a few differences depending on your view of what the Bible says, or how you interpret the science, we can generally say the following:
Both accounts start from nothing, move to the heavens, then from a disordered earth to an ordered earth, to a habitat made for life, to life developing from simple to complex, ending with humans.
This is amazing.
It is made even more amazing when you realize that the Hebrew language used in the Bible only had a few thousand words at the time it was written (not counting names). And it was written over 3000 years ago. In the first chapter of Genesis which we have read, there are only 31 verses…essentially a couple of pages of text. And these ancient 31 verses give us a picture of how the universe, earth, and life began in a way that naturalistic science has only recently discovered.
So, what is the problem? Why is the Creation account subjected to such scorn in the world today, by those professing naturalism as their belief system?
There are two basic reasons. The first is that the worldview of naturalism denies the existence of God, and the Bible declares that God created everything. You cannot read the Creation account without confronting the reality of God in the text. The very first verse of the Bible, the very first verse, reads,
In the beginning, God created the heavens and earth.
Genesis 1:1
If you are a naturalist, then you are forced to reject the Genesis Creation story at the very beginning.
The second reason is something that you have probably been thinking about during the last 5 episodes. Because we have only looked at the sequence of events, we have not talked about the huge time discrepancy.
Let us face it, six days of Creation does not seem compatible with billions of years.
This is the elephant in the room and a primary reason why many naturalists reject the Bible’s Creation account. It just does not seem possible that there is any way to reconcile this massive difference.
CLOSING
And that is where our conversation goes next.
In our next episode we are going to tackle the Creation dilemma of time.
As always, if you have any comments, suggestions, or questions, please email me at glenn@spiritledhope.com, or simply use the Contact Form at spiritledhope.com. That is spiritLEDhope.com.
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As we close…
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope, by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Until next episode, take care.
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