Or, The Evolution of Our Discontent
Scripture: Genesis 1:1-31
Date: March 29, 2015
Speaker: Sean Higgins
Or, How Genesis One Shoots Holes in the Story of Theistic Evolution
This past week I read an article about a Christian biology professor at a state university who begins each school year with seven lectures on the development of complex life from simple cells. Many of her students come from conservative Christian homes and they respond to her class confused, sometimes outraged, at the combining of evolution with creation. That’s okay, though, because in reality, the “beginning of the school year” just means the start of students thinking and “seven lectures” is a way to say a full amount of teaching. It’s even more okay than that, though, because when I said “This past week I read an article” I actually didn’t. I made up the whole thing. I know it sounded like I was telling an actual account, but any resemblance to reality was coincidental. There’s nothing to get upset about after all, since the words don’t mean what they initially appeared to mean.
There is something upsetting in Genesis one, at least in this Genesis three world. If Moses is telling the truth, then we have not been sufficiently amazed, humbled, excited, or thankful. Wow! Whoa! Woohoo! Wonderful! The world of this God is not something to put in formaldehyde in a jar on a shelf, but something for us to play with.
Read Genesis one as if it were a birthday card taped to the outside of the big, wrapped box. Let it tease your imagination about the contents of the package. The whole story is about God making and giving. It’s a story about treasure. But it’s not as much a thrill if we don’t read it right.
One way to torture the party is to invite evolution. Like I said last Lord’s day, some sort of theistic evolution, let’s call it “thevolution,” or progressive creationism gasses the water for the majority of professing evangelicals (let alone less Scripture-centric or Scripture-less groups). So many want to eat evolution cake with Genesis one icing. But that’s like icing sand. There isn’t a spatula known to man that can cover that spread.
We began to load our figurative guns with observation bullets, bullets that shoot metaphorical holes in the evolutionary argument. First, the story is amazing, but it isn’t an analogy or allegory. Moses narrates the events, he does not hide meaning behind event words. Second, the order and the speed of the steps down the creation timeline go against the proposed sequence and hypothesized time required for evolutionary progress. And third, Moses uses the literary technique of “I told you-and it was-so.” He fires round after round of explicit fulfillment statements after every divine fiat.
The biblical account of creation is night and day from theistic evolution. Here are four more bullets (for our a seven shooter).
The crowbar theistic evolutionists use to pry open the story for more time is the word “day.” In order for evolution to fit in Genesis one, “day” must represent long periods of undefined time, more than likely covering thousands or millions of years.
The Hebrew word for “day” is yom. The question is, does yom ever refer to a period of time other than 24 hours? The answer is Yes. Even in the first two chapters of Genesis, “day” is used at least three different ways.
But note first of all that, even though there are different definitions, none of theses uses of “day” involve ages or eons.
Outside of Genesis one, yom + ordinal number (used 410 times) always indicates an ordinary day, that is, a 24-hour period. The words “evening"" and “morning” together (38 times) with yom always indicate an ordinary day. Yom + “evening” or “morning” (23 times each) always indicates an ordinary day. Yom + “night” (52 times) always indicates an ordinary day. See [Ken Ham’s study guide on “yom”][ham]. [ham]: https://www.answersingenesis.org/cec/study_guides/answersSG2.pdf
Second, the context establishes how long a day is in Genesis one. Every single day in the chapter is defined. It starts in verses 3-5. God creates light, separates it from darkness, calls the light Day and the darkness Night. And there was evening and there was morning the first day . The light/darkness, evening/morning, the [ X ] day formula is repeated for each of the first six days (verses 5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31).
Third, what in the passage suggests that day should be understood figuratively, as a metaphor or symbol of something else? Nothing else in the chapter is figurative. If “day” doesn’t mean “day,” why does “earth” mean “earth”? Why doesn’t “vegetation” represent angels, or viruses? How can “man” mean “man”? It is strange and inconsistent to suggest “day” means something other than what it typically does.
How do theistic evolutionists answer this?
[L]et’s look at what evening and morning are not. They are not actual evening and mornings, as this requires a sunrise and sunset. According to young earth theory, the Sun was not created until Day Four, thus there could be no sunrise or sunset for the first three days of creation. However, God uses the terms evening and morning for those first three days. Therefore, they cannot be actual evenings and mornings.
We are left with only one option. The words for Evening and Morning can only represent the beginning and ending of the creative period, and not actual sunrise and sunsets. (See Old Earth Ministries, formerly called Answers in Creation)
As if God could not create light or establish light/dark cycles apart from the sun, they simply ignore Moses’ account and force their assumptions into Genesis one. But God uses the same phrases and divisions before the creation of the sun on the fourth day as He does after. How are we supposed to tell when day gets its normal definition?
Days are defined as solar days, 24 hour days as we know them today. There weren’t millions of minutes between the light/dark transitions in verse five that made the first “day.” Saying that a “day” represents long ages casts suspicion on every word in the account. The only reason to even suggest a day isn’t a day is because of presuppositions outside the text and makes for the worst kind of eisegesis. Thevolution’s definition for “day” in Genesis one is perhaps one of the most fallacious and deplorable examples of reading into the text in all of Scripture.
This shoots as big a hole in theistic evolution as any of the previous bullets. Everything that reproduces, every plant, every animal, every fish, every bird, every insect, and every human being, all reproduce according to their kinds .
On day three (verses 11-12), God created vegetation (remember that in the evolutionary timeline plants are not the first sort of organic life), and the phrase according to its kind is repeated three times. Apple trees produce apple seeds that grow into little apple trees. Orange trees produce orange seed that don’t grow into oak trees with a citrusy smell.
On day five (verses 20-23), God established that each individual type of water creature would reproduce according to their kinds (demonstrating that there were multiple kinds in the water from the start), and every winged bird multiplied according to its kind .
Then on day six (verses 24-25), God established that livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth all would multiply according to their kinds . God made multiple complex animals, He made them distinct from each other, and made them to reproduce keeping those distinctions. Humans may have successfully bred cocker poodles and schnauzer into schnoodles, a sort of limited common descent, but it’s still a dog. We’ve never mated mosquitos with goldfish or squirrels into mosquish or squirritos.
And even though the phrase “according to their kind” isn’t included when God made men and women, they were the only creatures fashioned in the likeness of God’s image. Men are of a different kind altogether.
No kind jumps the shark. There is no mutating across breeds or progression up the food chain. God placed limits and boundaries on the light and darkness, on the sea and the seashores, and on living creatures breeding according to their kinds. Fish belong in the water; flying is for the birds; men and animals were made as land lovers. God creates, God separates, God distinguishes, God defines, and God sets breeding boundaries.
At multiple points throughout week one, God declared His work “good.” When He gathered the waters together to make dry land, God saw that it was good (verse 10). When He made plants and trees yielding seed and bearing fruit, God saw that it was good (verse 12). When He set the sun and moon to rule the day and night, God saw that it was good (verse 18). When He created fish and fowl, God saw that it was good (verse 21). When He made livestock and insects, God saw that it was good (verse 25).
As He prepared the earth for life, specifically life for His image-bearers, God pronounced His own approving evaluation of creation’s goodness. That is, God declared creation’s beauty and quality and acceptability and desirability.
Then, God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good (verse 31). There was nothing about His creation that was deficient or defective or hurtful. So here’s the question: if violence and killing and death prevailed on the planet, with weak and mutant and in-between-stages creatures, as evolution requires, how could God claim “everything was very good”? Theistic evolution must imply that death is an acceptable good, that as long as the fittest survive and overall progress is being made, everything is okay. But in biblical terms, that is a very bad kind of good, and really no good at all. Death doesn’t create. Death is a judgment, not a gift.
Though it isn’t in Genesis one, two sentences in chapter two knock the final wind out of the evolutionary appeal. Chapter two fits between verses 26 and 27 in chapter one as an expanded look into the creation of man. We see first that man is made from mud, not monkeys. “Then the LORD God formed man of the dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living creature” (Genesis 2:7). God used ground, not another creature already walking around on the ground, like a potter with clay. But this Potter blew into the pot’s nose and caused Him to live. That’s not something to sneeze at.
Maybe more perplexing is verse 22. “The rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.” Gender is not a mutation, it is a God-given distinction (see also Genesis 1:27). Eve wasn’t a random accident but a purposeful, diving gift to Adam. It was a match made by heaven and not by exploding hydrogen.
In both cases it’s as if God struck a direct hit on the right keys. He was not plunking around on the piano until the tune sounded right. Man didn’t mutate but originated, he was “caused to begin” by God not as the next stage but as the first stage.
Could Moses have written the story in any other way that would have been more beyond doubt that he was referring to six 24 hour days? If the assignment had been to leave open the possibility of evolution in chapter one, Moses failed.
In light of how directly these observations refute thevolution, let alone naturalistic evolution, I wonder if Darwin didn’t concoct his theory by sitting down with Genesis one in front of him and consciously writing an anti-Genesis story. Since he grew up in a professing Christian home, I think it’s reasonable to suppose he knew exactly the truth he was rejecting.
Darwin also left a legacy of discontentment. How could we be satisfied with who we are now or what we have now? We can not be satisfied with the future either, because we won’t experience when things are better because how will we know when it’s really better? It could always be better. Plus, we’ll probably be dead by then.
How we read the first chapter of Genesis makes a difference in what we think God’s goal in the universe is. If He created as an overflow of His trinitarian glory for sharing His image and fellowship with us, then it matters how we were made: as persons by a Person. It also means that our limitations are given by God and good for us. Who we are and what we have and what we can’t do is gift. Who could ask for anything more?