Can Creation according to Genesis be honestly taught as Science

There is One who observed creation from the beginning - and He wrote the account of the creation in a book that He has given to mankind.

This same observer also observes so-called "scientists" and they spout their evolutionistic babble - and He says of them - "The fool has said in his heart, there is no God."

 

I thank God that there are still those that call themselves 'Believers' and BELIEVE what God's Word says!

 

Chemnitz sez:

BINGO!!!

But by the same token, the Genesis account fits just as well; the difference being the bias with which the EXACT same evidence is explained! Thank you for being so candid! Now if you can convince the strict BB evolutionists that "It is a theory that appears to fit the observational data collected by anthropologist and paleontologists." and is no more provable scientifically than creation------!

El_Guero sez:

Even so, come Lord Jesus!!!!!!!!

 

The Genesis accounts in chapters one and two, taken literally, disagree with each other as to the order of creation. This is a sign to me that it is not a literal narrative but a poetic narrative of the creation, and therefore is not to be read as a contradiction of the findings of science.

It is to be read as an affirmation of God as the great Creator.

 

Couldnt have said it better, myself!

Mike

 

The Bible is not a text book on science, but where it speaks on scientific matters it is correct. When studying science, one should keep in mind what the Bible has said on the matter.

The Bible, however, is silent in many areas of science, and for one simple reason. It is a text on the story of redemption. It is the story of one people in particular; Israel of the Old Covenant and the Church, the Israel of God, in the New Covenant.

I have no difficulty with Theistic evolution and believing the Bible; they are consonant with each other, in my mind.

Some tend to confuse the believer who agrees that God is, and that the Book is, and the non-believer who rejects both premises and finds little foundation for his misguided science.

Cheers,

Jim

 

Greetings

Great comment!!
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Yikes! If God could be wrong about the literal hours of creation, then He could be wrong about the literal hourse Jonah spent in the whale. Jesus referred to Jonah's saga as a sign of His time in the grave. Could Jesus also be wrong?

One little compromise leads to dire consequences. A little leak in a dam eventually leads to a total collapse and flood.

Either the Bible is true as you spoke or it is a lie. Do not be hot and cold at the same time.

Lloyd

 

Lloyd, the Bible is true but men's interpretations are not always true. Therefore it is not at all unreasonable to use the evidence from God's creation as a guide to interpret God's word, because it is easier to devise tests for the evidence from God's creation.

 

Lloyd, first you must establish that the creation was 6 literal days as we know them. That has not been established one way or the other by evangelical theologians down through the ages. At one point in time, fundamentalists even espoused the gap theory, and that didn't trouble anyone;s belief in the soundness of scripture.

Theistic evolution simply put allows evolution within the species, and not cross development. Man was never an ape.

As I said, the issue is the believability of the Bible as God's word, and not the interpretation. Just look at Calvinism vs Arminianism from the same Bible and from the same devout believers. Look at the denominations and all from the same scriptures.

Cheers,

Jim

 

That is the most blatantly "UNTRUE" statement of the whole thread.

IT HAS been established BY GOD as the SAME as the SIX literal days at Sinai.

In Exodus 20 GOD HIMSELF argues that the "YOM" of Genesis 1-2 is the SAME as the "YOM" of Israel standing at Sinai

"SIX DAYS YOU SHALL... FOR IN SIX DAYS GOD CREATED"

The only way to bend and twist that simple direct appeal to the Genesis 1-2:3 facts is to FIRST bring BIAS to the text and "WANT" to compromise the Word!

And of course - many do just that. But that does NOT mean that the Word is any less clear just because man's tradition and humanism itself is at war with the Word!!

In the Gospels the Jewish traditions were at war with the Gospel - that does not make the Gospel "Vauge" or "unclear" -- the Word was clear all the same!

The question is NOT -- can anyone with a basic IQ SEE that the Exodus 20 language SHOWS equivalence in YOM as hardwired -- "SIX days you SHALL... for in SIX DAYS the LORD MADE" -- the issues is -- IN SPITE OF THAT obvious fact will we simply turn a blind eye to it in favor of humanism and man's traditions!

Then to ADD to the sin of choosing man over God - to then blame it on God as if GOD WAS NOT CLEAR - is simply adding sin to sin.

As many people know - the Orthodox Jews embrace evolutionism's errors fully. But when asking an Orthodox Jewish Rabbi in Israel about the WORDS in the Exodus 20 text -- regarding the YOM of Sinai vs the YOM of Creation week and whether the TEXT ITSELF justified inserting TWO DIFFERENT definitions in the SAME text written by the SAME author - the answer was emphatically "NO"! Nothing IN THE TEXT of Exodus 20 argues for TWO DIFFERENT meanings!!

But man's recent tradition DOES!

In Christ,

Bob

 

Genesis 1-2:3 gives a chronological TIME SEQUENCE. Each event has the TIME ELEMENT assigned "ONE day" -- "evening and morning THE SECOND DAY".

IF the condemnation of scripture given above by Paul were true AND the content of the chapter 2 said "on DAY ONE the fish were created" and "On day two the Sun was created" then indeed we WOULD have a timeline SEQUENCE in Chapter 2 that differes from the timeline chronology of chapter 1-2:3.

No such timeline CHRONOLOGICAL SEQUENCE is given in chapter 2 after vs 3. So lacking that - the one who wishes to undermine scripture will "Say that it does anyway".

You will see this rule hold up NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES you point out that there is NO CHRONOLOGICAL SEQUENCE in chapter 2 after vs 3.

This is a little shortcircuit in evolutionist logic that never fails to blowout their fuse.

In Christ,

Bob

 

The assumption is that GOD SAW it - and that God is ABLE to SHOW what HE saw to others - so that it is not merely MAN speaking - but GOD the EYE WITNESS.

Get it?

In Christ,

Bob

 

Only if God is God ...

 

And such logic leads to the idea that the only way Scripture can indicate sequence is through accounts that clearly delineate each day. Unfortunately, nowhere else in Scripture are events presented in such a neat, tightly-arranged order as Genesis 1 -- not in Kings or Chronicles, not in Acts, and not even when Jesus' death and resurrection are recorded in the Gospels! The reason is that the highly ordered seven days of creation find their closest parallel not in strict historical accounts, but rather in more symbolic narratives, such as the accounts of the seven seals, seven trumpets and seven vials in Revelation.

Genesis 2 uses cause and effect in an orderly narrative to indicate sequence:
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• There were no plants of the field because there was no man and no rain (2:5). The ground was watered (2:6) and God formed the man (2:7). With the problems overcome, God planted a garden and placed the man in it (2:8).</font>
• There was no helper for the man (2:18), so God formed the animals (2:19), and when none were compatible (2:20), God operated on Adam (2:21) and formed Eve (2:22).</font>

To claim that the account contains no sequence is to rip the logical flow right out of it.

 

Answers in Genesis

 

Pastor Larry wrote,

There may be many uneducated people being duped by Answers in Genesis and the Institute for Creation Research, but VERY MANY more people are learning everyday that the theory of evolution is very well supported by science, and that the ultraconservative fundamentalist interpretation of Genesis is not all supported by science—indeed, the ultraconservative fundamentalist interpretation of Genesis 6-11 has been proven by science to be absolutely ridiculous.

A few facts about Noah’s Ark

• The ark as literally described in Genesis was much too small because the amount of water that it would be capable of displacing would weigh less that the animals on board making it impossible for the ark to float.

• The floor space on the ark was too small to hold any more than a tiny fraction of the cages that would be necessary to keep the animals in place (and from eating each other).

• The amount of food required for the animals would weigh nearly as much as the animals and would require a vast amount of storage space.

• Many of the animals aboard the ark would have required specific FRESH fruits, vegetables, leaves, grass, bark, roots, etc.

• Most of the genetically discrete populations of fish (including many VERY large fish) would have to be taken aboard the ark and kept in tanks of water that met their very specific water chemistry needs in order to survive.

• The weight of the water on the earth would have crushed to death any of the land plants that did not drown in the water.

• After 150 days when the water abated, there would be no vegetation on the earth for the herbivores to eat, and no meat for the carnivores to eat, therefore a vast mount of food would necessarily have been kept on the ark to sustain the animals AFTER the flood.

• Many of the herbivores would have had very specific dietary needs, including fresh fruits and berries that are produced only on MATURE plants. Therefore these mature plants would necessarily have been kept and maintained on the ark and subsequently planted in the ground after the flood.

• The Animals could not all be released at once or in the same place because they would eat each other.

• Collecting the animals from all over the earth would have been a physical impossibility no less impossible than Santa Clause delivering presents to every boy and girl on the night before Christmas.

• After the flood, the animals could not be returned to their original habitat because all habitats would have been destroyed by the flood.

• Many of the necessary habitats would take 50 years or more to be reestablished and their reestablishment would have required the effort of many thousands of persons.

• Until all the necessary habitats could be reestablished, the animals requiring these habitats would have to be kept and cared for by Noah and his family.

• There was not enough water to cover the entire earth; and even if there was, where did it go after the flood.

• If the reported sightings of the Ark are correct, the Ark came to rest on a VERY high mountain on VERY rugged terrain from which the vast majority of the animals would not have been able descend.

Any rational man or woman can see at once that the story of Noah’s Ark can NOT be a literal account of an historic event. Indescribably huge miracles would have been necessary, and a literal interpretation of Genesis does not allow for these miracles because the whole point of the narrative is that through the natural means of an ark built by Noah and his family mankind and all the kinds of animals were saved from the water.

No where in the Bible does it say or suggest that God wrote Genesis. Yes, Genesis, like the rest of the Bible, is an inspired work, but that is NOT to say that God sat down, picked up some clay tablets, and wrote the Book of Genesis. It is VERY much more likely that Moses or some other ancient Jews were inspired by God to collect the oral and written traditions concerning the creation and the flood, and that they did so much as Luke was inspired by God to perform his research and write his Gospel and the Book of Acts.

Luke 1:1. Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us,
2. just as they were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word,
3. it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus;
4. so that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been taught.

 

Yes, Genesis 1-11 is a series of eyewitness accounts and may be taught as such.

Which my husband and I do, with plenty of real, actual science to back it up.

In response to Craig's post above:

1. There is no evidence aside from interpretations that any protobacteria was ever able to evolve into a bear, fern, moth, or anything else. Mutations ALWAYS reduce specificity and there is no way evolution could proceed with a progressive lack of specificity!

2. The size of the Ark was not the point regarding water displacement, the shape of it was. For instance, we live in Grants Pass, Oregon, where a major tourist attraction in the summer is jetboat rides on the Rogue River. Those boats displace only 18" of water and yet can safely carry 50+ people at a time.

3. The Ark was plenty big enough to carry samples from each KIND of animal (way different from species!). Since all animals on the Ark were hebivorous prior to the flood, there was no need to worry about them eating each other! Partitions would have been useful, however, for a couple of other reasons: to keep weight evenly distributed, and to keep the big guys from accidently trampling the little guys. Partitions would have also helped by allowing some of the animals to go into partial or full hibernation during that year. Whether or not they did, I have no idea, but if they did, the partitions would have given them the space they needed.

4. It does not take nearly the skill to compress hay and such into pellets as it does to build an Ark! In addition, animals under stress, which they probably were at least some of the time, rarely eat as much as in non-stress times. Keeping in mind that the average size was probably no larger than a sheep, and perhaps smaller, there was plenty of room for plenty of food for all on board.

5. Many of the animals would undoubtedly have preferred fresh food, but they would have been able to get along without it for a year, surviving on dried and compressed foodstuffs. This is still possible.

6. The Bible says distinctly that only land and air animals were on the Ark. Fish had plenty of water outside of it!

7. Land plants would have mostly been destroyed but there were several means of repopulation of plants after the Flood: from seeds that were part of the foodstuff on the Ark and not consumed that year, from seeds and spores not destroyed by the Flood but preserved on floating vegetation mats (which still can be seen after monsoons today and provide good evidence of what was possible), from seeds preserved whole in the guts of some of the animals, just like today.

8. There would have been enough food on the Ark to sustain the animals for the entire year, as God required. The animals were not released until an OLIVE leave was brought back. Hard seed plants grow much more slowly than grasses, so there would have already been abundant grasses by the time the animals were released. Those animals which now had to depend on flesh since their protein-rich plant foods were decimated would have found immediate meals available in the massive populations of rodents which would have been breeding on the Ark for a year (poor Mrs. Noah!).

9. What we see today in dietary needs of herbivores is the result of several thousand years of reduced ability to vary in the populations and reduced specificity due to mutations. The earlier animals would have been much more robust and been able to survive on more different kinds of vegetation than our pickier eaters today.

10. There would have been no problem with releasing the animals all in the same place as the carnivores were not yet used to hunting, but rather were used to being fed by the family on the Ark. This would have given the larger grazing animals plenty of time to move away. In addition, we have no rcord of Noah knowing ahead of time how long the time on the Ark would last, and so there is no reason to suspect that he only had food for one exact year. He probably had more than that, and animals off the Ark were still able to eat the last of the food for awhile.

11. Noah did not have to collect the animals. God caused the animals to come to him. Gen. 7:8

12. Yes, all old habitats were destroyed by the Flood. There were a bunch of new ones to be filled.

13. People were not necessary for the habitats to be restored. God grows plants just fine all by Himself.

14. There was plenty of water to cover all the earth. It is in the ocean basins today.

15. I doubt very much there are any real sightings of the Ark. So far all have been shown to be the result of natural formations and 'tricks' played by the light at certain times of day. Since there was no wood to build from after the Flood, it seems to me that it would have been silly for Noah to leave that perfectly good bit of construction alone and not dismantled it to use the wood for new homes and such.

16. Mt. Ararat (if that is indeed where the Ark landed) was not as sharp and as high as now until the time of Peleg, several hundred years later, when the continental movement caused the crumpling of the earth's crust, giving rise to the highest and sharpest of our current mountain ranges.

The Flood is not a matter, by the way, of man's rationality, but of God's judgment and of the natural forces He used to cause it. It was a real event. Noah and family were real people. The Ark was real, the disaster was real, the salvation through it was real. Jesus also referred to it as a real event.

There is very good evidence that Genesis is a series of eyewitness accounts and not something handed down as a matter of story-telling. This consideration is referred to as the Tablet Hypothesis, and is being taken seriously by more and more OT scholars now. It was started by Wiseman in the thirties when he realized that the oldest of tablets we have from the Middle East all have the author's 'signature' and the title of the document at the end of it, not at the beginning. We see this exact pattern in Genesis, where the authors 'sign off' of their tablets. If this is true, and I personally believe it is, then yes, God Himself wrote down Genesis 1:1-2:4a. After all, He also wrote the Ten Commandments Himself with His own finger in stone for Moses...He is, after all, a literate God. A good explanation of the Tablet Hypothesis was done by Curt Sewell (he is dying of cancer now, but was one of those who worked on the Manhattan Project in WWII. His trip to faith in Christ is chronicled in his book "God at Ground Zero"). His essay can be found on the net here: http://www.ldolphin.org/tablethy.html

It should also be noted that when Luke wrote Luke and Acts, he was both interviewing live witnesses (the Book of Luke) and living the events as an eyewitness (Acts).

I am truly amazed that someone as knowledgeable as Craig has missed so much of what Genesis has to say, as well as the fact that the rest of the Bible testifies to its historical reality.

 

The problem with the ark and animals is resolved in understanding the flood as localized and not a world-wide flood, which is preposterous.

Theistic evolution involves development within the species and not crossovers. Humankind developed; he did not evolve per se.

On the records of the beginnings, every religion has a written or verbal account of the beginnings. Moses was not an eyewitness, but depended on the stories passed down to him. He just put it to pen.


Cheers,

Jim

 

Well, Jim, as long as you understand that that disagrees with what the Bible said! Why on earth, for example, would God send animals to Noah to be saved from a LOCAL flood? Why not just migrate them to higher ground? Which is exactly what Noah could have done with his livestock and family, too.

One would expect that both the creation and the Flood stories would be in every civilization. Via Noah, that is how they all came about!

Nor is there evidence that Moses wrote Genesis. Edited it, yes. Put in a few parenthetics, yes. But it is written in an entirely different SET of styles from the books Moses did write. Genesis presents itself as a series of eyewitness accounts from the people who lived them. It should be accepted or rejected on its own terms, not on made-up terms that simply allow those who disagree with it to feel comfortable with it.