|
II. The Bible & Nature It should not come as a big surprise to anyone that the Bible is not a “textbook” about any particular area of scientific study. It was not intended to be an “exhaustive” record even of the things God has done (John 20:30; 21:25). Of course, for a number of practical reasons, all books are “selective” and focused on the agenda of the author. The primary purpose of the Bible is to explain to us, from God’s perspective, the human predicament and God’s program to bring a Savior into the world. On the other hand, while not a “textbook” on any area of scientific investigation, that does not mean that we should disregard what it does say about matters of history and the natural universe. What it does say accords pretty well with reality and has stood the test of time much better than any “science textbook.” Throughout human history, the idea of supernatural “creation” in some form is easily the most common viewpoint and was widespread in the ancient world. This view assumes that there is more than matter and natural processes to “reality” - there is, ultimately, an intelligent Creator and a realm “outside of” and/or in addition to the physical universe. As for the Bible and statements bearing on the natural, physical universe and the earth, here are a few of the things that I believe should be considered and tested against the available evidence. The Eternal Foundation Since (1) a full-blown worldview must answer the three basic questions (origins, purpose, destiny) and (2) every cause-effect argument winds up beginning with some eternal, uncaused “First Cause/Prime Mover,” there is nothing wrong with considering that the eternal “first cause” was an eternal “Someone.” Evolutionists, embracing materialistic and naturalistic philosophy, can believe something like “in the beginning, hydrogen . . .” (Harlow Shapley), if they wish - that, given enough time and natural processes alone, a colorless, tasteless, odorless gas turned into people. However, I confess that I reached a point in my education when I decided I no longer had enough faith to believe the materialistic/naturalistic scenario. Considering all of the issue and angles involves, I chose to believe that "in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). Following Biblical information as a guide, this view begins with the belief that an eternal Creator God exists. Essentially, the available philosophically sound possibilities for a starting place are remarkably limited - either an eternal “something” or an eternal “Someone.” Between the two options, the issues of where matter, order, natural processes, life, and intelligence came from seem easier to answer beginning with an eternal, intelligent, and powerful Designer - God! From a simple logical standpoint, an intelligent Designer makes it much easier to account for natural laws and predictable patterns, orderly systems, life, the moral sense, and human nature/intelligence. Trying to account for those things starting with mere inanimate matter and natural processes seems like a much more difficult task. The “Time” Element The creation of the universe is portrayed in terms of six “morning/evening” days (Genesis 1 & Exodus 20:11) and then genealogies portray human history in terms of thousands of years (Genesis 5 & 11). Two Old Testament passages identify the "span of years" between major events: (1) 430 years for Israel's time in Egypt (Exodus 12:40,41 - 1876-1446 B.C.) and (2) the 480 years between the exodus and the 4th year of Solomon's reign (1Kings 6:1). No such figures are given for events prior to 1876, but it does not take difficult math to add up the genealogical figures for the Patriarchs, from Abraham back to Adam (Genesis 5 & 11). Thus, the Bible suggests a fairly young universe/earth, which is very reasonable if you have an intelligent and powerful Creator to give form to the universe. How much of each 24-hour day was required to produce each of the items mentioned is not stated. There are a number of current rates that can be measured and extrapolated into the past to give an age for the earth - suggested ages for the universe range from 6 - 20 billion years. The evolutionary/naturalist age for the earth has grown over the last two centuries from 75,000 years to the current “orthodox” age of 4.6 billion years, based on the radioactive decay rate of uranium 235 & 238 into Lead 207 & 206 in meteorites that have landed on earth. Of course, the notion of a young universe/earth is ridiculous to evolutionists, because, having dismissed the Creator from their story, they are left with only matter and unguided natural processes to explain everything. Accordingly, their story is only plausible when you have lots of time in the mix to allow unguided natural processes to make their countless unsuccessful “trial & error” events necessary until a successful combination occurs. As we will see later, some evolutionists admit that lots of time is the “miraculous” element that makes evolution believable. An external Designer eliminates the need for so much time to bring order out of chaos. The Origin of the Universe The Bible simply says that God created (bara - from nothing) the heavens and the earth “in the beginning.” This notion (of a universe coming forth from nothing) is not so far-fetched - there are current cosmologists and astro-physicists putting forth theories that say, essentially, the same thing. You could begin the Bible story this way “To begin with, God created the universe.” Genesis is not an astronomy textbook, but it is a simple, straightforward, and non-mythical account to set the stage for the main story. Devoid of mythical parallels with other Middle Eastern origin stories, Genesis 1 describes the sun and moon as just lights in the sky that are useful for marking time (Genesis 1:14-18) and “He made the stars also” (v. 16). Moses did not name the sun and moon, because they are not deities or heavenly beings to worship - a break from what most nations and cultures believed. When Job demanded an explanation of what was going on, God asked him what he knew about the origin of the universe and Job realized quickly that such a question was way beyond him (Job. 38:4ff). The Bible tells us very little about the mechanics of how the universe formed when God spoke it into existence, but I suspect that efforts by materialistic and naturalistic scientists to explain the origin of the universe by looking at its current operation are severely misguided. Not only is such knowledge probably unattainable (no human scientifically "observed" the actual origin of the universe, nor can anyone reproduce anything like it under laboratory condition), but speculation on it is also probably a worthless pursuit (why spend time trying to figure out the mechanics of a one-time event in the distant past when we are doing a poor job of understanding and handling daily life in the present). Spending time trying to concoct a detailed speculation about how matter alone could accidentally form this universe is like chasing “Bigfoot” - it keeps some intellectuals busy on funded research projects chasing a phantom that they never seem to find and doesn’t do anybody else any good! If we are correct and an external designer “created” the universe using knowledge and power that is, simply, beyond us and out of our reach, then “science” studying current operational processes is wasting its time trying to somehow work these into being origin processes. Example - evolutionists like to conceive of the universe as a matter machine operating by natural laws. Let’s compare the universe to another machine - an automobile engine. The processes by which an automobile engine is manufactured are totally different from the “operational” processes involved when the machine is in existence and working. Mining, metal-working, milling, and assembly are very different from ignition, timing, combustion, carburetion, etc. processes. When astronomers and astrophysicists look through telescopes and observe what is occurring in an existing universe, I doubt that they are really able to learn anything about how the universe itself came into existence. Aside from learning more about what is there (I’m ok with that - the Hubble photos are neat), I suspicion a lot of research money and time is being wasted on theorizing about cosmological origins. How much is a man in a box ever going to be able to learn about how boxes are made? Speculations that can never be verified are about all they will ever produce. I prefer, “In the beginning . . .God made it” - now let’s get on with stuff that has more value to human life and society right now! The Declining Universe The Bible portrays an initial "creation" event in which the universe was given its form and nature was given its order. You could call this an initial "ordering" event. Soon afterward, a curse was placed upon the natural order - a tendency toward decay and disorder from what was originally possible (Genesis 3:14-19). This tendency toward decline and disorder is mentioned elsewhere as "wearing out" (Ps. 102:25-27), "subjected to futility" (Rom. 8:20), and "passing away" (1Jn. 2:17). Thus, it should come as no surprise to us that science has recognized a general tendency in nature toward disorder. The first two principles of thermodynamics are about as solidly "proven" as anything in modern science and the implications are serious - there is a fixed amount of matter and energy in the universe and as matter-energy conversions occur, there is a general loss of energy for available work in the future. Thus, there must have been an original "high order" state, from which all natural systems are declining toward disorder (higher entropy) and, eventually (by natural processes alone), the universe will "wind down" to the point that it suffers "heat death." The Origin of Life Genesis teaches the well-established principle of "bio-genesis" - that life comes from pre-existing life rather than arising spontaneously from inanimate material. Thus, the "Living God" is the source of life on earth. First, wild plant life (Genesis 1:11,12) and then major types of sea life & birds were created, then animal life, finally humans (Genesis 1:20-28) were created fully-formed and then began reproducing. Life appeared in the form of a number of first representatives of major groups of lifeforms (phyla?), formed early and at about the same time (Genesis 1:20-25). These original forms then reproduced “after their kind” and could, presumably, vary and adapt to some degree within those major group boundaries. The Bible says God created major “kinds” that reproduced within the “kind” boundaries - Genesis does not teach that God created all “species” at the beginning - that idea came from Plato & Aristotle’s “Great Chain of Being” and was blended into the medieval European worldview by the Scholastics (ca. 900-1200 A.D.). Thus, as a predictive model, Genesis 1 suggests that whatever evidence might exist for such a distant event would suggest that God made major kinds of lifeforms appeared abruptly, early, simultaneously, and separately. We might find evidence of adaptation and variation within those major groups later on, but we should not expect to find evidence of any major form/group of life gradually evolving into any other major group/kind. Paul said that “all flesh is not the same” but has been separated into several distinct types of “flesh” from the beginning (1Corinthians 15:39). Humans did not develop from some lower form of animal life, but were “human/man” and “in God’s image” when created (Genesis 1:26-28; 5:1-2). Humans share the physical “breath of life” with other lifeforms (Genesis 2:7; 6:13,17), but uniquely have “God’s image/ likeness” and the power to oversee/steward the rest of the earth’s creatures (Genesis 1:26-28; James 3:7 - pets, conservation efforts, veterinary science; zoos, farming). Thus, you should not expect to find clear-cut evidence of humans evolving from animals - ape to man transitions should be hard to find. On the other hand, vitamin deficiency and diseases would have been capable of giving some ancient humans deformed features that could be mistakenly interpreted as something evolving upward from an ape-like ancestor. In effect, such creatures could also have been degenerate humans on the fringes of society, rather than “super-apes” on the way up. This explanation would be strengthened if “modern” human evidences could be found apparently co-existing with supposed “pre-human” ancestors. The Nephilim The fossil record verifies something else that the Bible mentions – giant lifeforms existed before the watery catastrophe that caused the great fossilization event(s). Genesis 6:4 indicates that the nephilim were on the earth prior to the flood. Use of the term in reference to the “giant people” Israel encountered in the land of Canaan (although exaggerated in their account to the Israelites – Num 13:33) indicates that “large” lifeforms are intended. The fossil record indicates that many animals in the past were much larger than their modern counterparts.
Birds were not the only form of life much larger
than we see today, reptiles also were sometimes much larger than we are used
to. Since 1964, researchers
Mammals exhibited the same increased size. There is evidence found in Alaska that beavers once were 7.5 feet long, Moose were twelve feet high at the shoulder, foot-long cockroaches, a 500 lb. Armadillo found in the Antarctic, bison that were nine feet tall at the shoulder, camels 20 feet tall, dragonflies with a 5-foot wingspan. It might be that the roots of the “dragon” legends that come from centuries ago reflect reality - spreading human populations encountering and eliminating the threat of diminishing post-flood dinosaurs in the same way that dangerous predators like Grizzly bears have been pushed into increasingly remote areas. The Great Flood After life had been upon the earth for some time, a major year-long flood event occurred, which caused mass extinctions and massive geological changes (Genesis 6-8). This was not described as a local Mesopotamian river flood, but a year-long and mountain-covering event involving torrential rainfall and subterranean waters (and massive volcanic activity?) bursting forth, followed by some other things that we can logically assume. Lots of water probably washed over the earth with accentuated tidal action (super-tsunamis and tidal waves) that could produce many sediments/strata, trapping and burying massive amounts of plant and animal life. Such accumulations of vegetation could have been buried in subsequent tidal actions and eventually turned into natural gas and oil. Massive collections of tree bark were somehow collected in areas, buried, and turned into large coal deposits. Noah was told to take two of every “kind” (representatives of the original created “kinds”? - Genesis 6:19,20) into the ark. If Noah preserved only representatives of the original basic kinds, then we could predict that many of the species/variations that may have developed from those original “major kinds” became extinct at the flood, were buried and became fossils, but never re-appeared after the flood. Some evolutionists assert that 99% of all of the species that ever lived on the earth are extinct. The Bible tells us that the flood caused the earth’s entire land surface to be underwater (Genesis 7:17-20) and then re-emerged. Except for the time element, this idea is also held by some geologists. An eminent geologist named Eldridge Moores drew on years of work on ancient rocks to argue that dry continents emerged suddenly on a planet previously 95 percent under water.[3] This notion is further supported by the fact that “pillow lava” (formed when lava comes forth under water) has been found at high elevations, along with marine fossils (shells and even whale skeletons). Some of the floodwater could have been trapped in post-flood inland lakes, which could have later grown with rain and melted snow/ice until they overflowed their boundaries and then rapidly eroded notches and cut major canyons in the soft post-flood sediments. During the last twenty years, several independent researchers have concluded that a number of features along the Western side of the North American continent were created by massive amounts of water catastrophically washing over the surface of the land - Canadian Drumlins, the Scablands of the American Northwest, and the major canyon systems of the American Southwest. After the eruption of Mt. St. Helens (1980) and documented observations, a growing number of geologists are beginning to consider that major canyon systems did not erode slowly, but were formed rapidly from catastrophic events/processes. In 1955, Immanuel Velikovsky published Earth in Upheaval,[4] in which he presented an impressive collection of documented reports from all over the world that point toward a massive catastrophe in the not-so-distant past that changed sea levels dramatically, changed the earth’s climate (trees, ferns, and corals once grew within 1,000 miles of the polar regions), destroyed lots of animals and deposited collections of mixed multiple animal body parts (including some human bones and pottery) in rocky fissures all over Europe and elsewhere, along with changing the well-populated and watered North African savannah into a massive desert, etc. Many have not heard of Velikovsky’s work because the evolutionary establishment applied pressure to keep the Macmillan Company from publishing his work and then tried to limit his influence and suppress discussion of his findings in academic circles. However, Velikovsky cited reputable sources and his work (especially this book) still deserves a reading. Other Nature Issues The Bible writers understood the hydrological cycle (Ecclesiastes 1:7; Isaiah 55:10), circular wind patterns (Ecclesiastes 1:6), the earth hanging on nothing and suspended in space (Job 26:7), the earth was rounded rather than flat (Isaiah 40:22), life is in the blood (Leviticus 17:11), clouds are made of water (Job 26:8), and basic sanitation (Deuteronomy 23:12,13). Peter and John may have been speaking about more complex issues in physics than they understood (time slows down as you approach the speed of light) when they wrote about God being light (1John 1:5) and time passing differently from God’s perspective than from ours (2Peter 3:8). The Bible encourages the examination of the natural universe (Genesis 15:5; Job 38-41; Psalm 19:1-6; Romans 1:20). Notes: [1] “Lawson’s Monster, Time (March 24, 1975), p. 64. [2] “Big Bird Discovered,” Cadillac (MI) Evening News (18 September 1980). [3] Charles W. Pettit, “The Wet Planet,” U.S. News & World Report (January 28/February 4, 2002), p. 37 [4] Immanuel Velikovsky, Earth in Upheaval (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1955). A Ministry of Severn Christian Church (Severn, Maryland) Unless otherwise noted, all material produced by Charles E. McCoy All Scripture citations/quotations from the New American Standard Bible To send a question to Chuck: chuck@severnchristian.org
|
Today we think of “large birds” in terms of ostriches, but Australia was once
home to a ten-foot tall, 1500 pound bird, the Dromornis stirtoni
(right). In 1975, Douglas Larson was exploring
Texas’
Big Bend National Park and found the fossilized bones of a pterosaur, a flying
reptile with a wingspan that must have been around 51 feet.
have
been aware that some prehistoric crocodiles reached a length of 40 feet and
weighed nine tons, such as the Sarcosuchus Imperator (right). Reptiles,
specifically dinosaurs were huge by modern standards. Tyranosaurus Rex and
similar predators averaged at least 45 feet long, while some sauropods
(4-legged, long neck & tail) were 130 feet long.
Sea creatures also grew to sizes far in excess of what is known today, such as
turtles 6-8 feet across (right). There were sharks, similar to Great Whites,
called
Megalodon
with mouths large enough to swallow a half dozen people at once (left) and must
have been up to 75 feet long. And what we may think is “fiction” is often truer
than we expect. Most have heard of the story “Moby Dick,” about a great white
whale that sinks a whaling ship. However, something very similar actually
happened to the whaling ship, Essex, on November 20, 1820 – it was rammed twice
and sunk by a large sperm whale that had been harpooned by one of its boats.
