A Minimal-Facts Case for Genesis

For Christians with a high view of Scripture, few debates within the Church are as contentious as how to interpret the creation accounts in Genesis.

Simply describing the major viewpoints requires a veritable lexicon of terms: young-earth creationism, day-age creationism, framework hypothesis, progressive creation, theistic evolution, intelligent design, and so on. In a society transformed by science and technology, the exact details of creation are arguably of more interest to this generation than to any of our forebears. Passions sometimes flare up, since the hermeneutics of Genesis also carry important implications for doctrines such as original sin and the inerrancy of Scripture.

Most non-Christians, however, are unaware of this vigorous back-and-forth within the Christian community regarding Genesis. Due partly to the high media profile of young-earth ministries and partly to pop-culture characterizations of Christians, nonbelievers typically think that converting to Christianity requires them to believe that:

God created the universe, earth, and all life in six 24-hour days.
The earth is only 6000 years old.
Common descent (i.e. “evolution”) is false.
Humans coexisted with dinosaurs.
Noah fit the ancestors of all present-day animals on the Ark.
The Flood covered the entire earth, killing all other humans and land animals.

But what if there were another way to present the creation accounts to nonbelievers? While Genesis has similarities to other ancient near-eastern (ANE) creation texts, critical differences set it apart. And when we examine the main points of Genesis – taking a 10,000-foot view — we find that they uniquely agree with modern science.

Amazing Parallels

If you are familiar with apologetics, you may have heard of the “Minimal Facts Case for the Resurrection.” This argument champions the truth of Jesus’s resurrection by leveraging a handful of historical facts that even secular historians accept. It shows that the resurrection accounts in the gospels are, in fact, the best explanation of these facts.

A similar argument can be made for the creation accounts in Genesis. This tactic largely sets aside the differences between Young Earth vs. Old Earth viewpoints and fiat creation vs. theistic evolution, which makes it less confusing to nonbelievers and of broader appeal to believers. The scientific points it makes are also widely accepted in the secular world.

In this first description of “The Minimal Facts Case for Genesis,” I have identified six persuasive, surprising facts that give us good reasons to trust the Bible’s account of creation. They are as follows

Fact 1: The universe was created from nothing and had a beginning

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” The famous opening of Genesis clearly states that the heavens and the earth (i.e. everything) did not exist until God made them. It also strongly implies that God created them from nothing, which is explicitly stated later in Hebrews 11:3. Time itself also had a beginning (2 Timothy 1:9).

Up until the 1960s, most astronomers thought the universe was eternal (or perhaps oscillated in never-ending cycles). The idea of a beginning was repugnant to many secular scientists because of its obvious theological implications. Nevertheless, evidence supporting the Big Bang theory, which posits a singular origin for all matter and energy, continued to mount until it became the dominant view.

The Bible’s astounding claims about the creation event is the basis for two major arguments for God’s existence, the Leibnizian cosmological argument and the Kalaam cosmological argument. But even apart from these formal apologetic arguments, the fact that Genesis got it right about the universe having a discrete origin thousands of years before modern science is uncanny.

Fact 2: The early earth changed from uninhabitable to habitable

“Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep.” The second verse of Genesis depicts the early earth as a desolate, disordered water world. There was no life, no light, no land. It would require sequential transformations by God to become fit for humanity.

Current scientific thinking about the early earth agrees with the Biblical imagery. Soon after formation, the earth was bombarded by asteroids and comets left over from the scraps of the solar nebula. After the molten surface cooled sufficiently, the thick atmosphere was able to condense, covering the earth with a global ocean. Due to volcanism and early plate tectonics, landmasses did not arise until later to “let dry ground to appear.” Water first, continents later – just like Genesis.

Fact 3: Life on earth progressed from simple to complex

“Let the land produce vegetation … let the water teem with living creatures…” The bulk of Genesis 1 describes a progression whereby God creates vegetation on the land, then living creatures in the water, birds, large land animals, and mankind. While Christians debate whether this sequence is meant to be read as natural history, there is an overall upward trend in the complexity and importance to mankind in the creatures that are being described.

Based on the fossil record, scientists have shown that simpler organisms predate more complex organisms. This progression is derived from examination of rock layers (strata), where newer deposits are found on top of older deposits. By harmonizing strata from around the world and the fossils they contain, it is possible to reconstruct the history of life on earth. The general progression of simple to complex agrees with the thrust of the Genesis creation account.

Fact 4: New life forms appeared suddenly

“Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind.” While the creation accounts don’t specifically describe how God created, the text implies an immediacy between God’s acts and their effects. The Genesis accounts and other creation texts (e.g., Psalm 104) carry a secondary theme of God preparing the earth for humans. So at the very least, Christians can expect from the text that a history of life where God was involved would look very different from a world where only physical laws existed.

Neo-Darwinian theory – the default evolutionary view – holds that life forms developed through genetic mutations, natural selection, and vast spans of time. This process should intuitively be very slow, gradual, and constant. Instead, the history of life is dominated by statis – long periods of relatively little change in the kinds of organisms – interrupted by explosions of innovation. Catastrophic, epoch-ending mass extinctions are followed by the sudden appearance of fully formed ecosystems filled with novel life.

The fossil record, in fact, is so discordant with the expectations of standard evolutionary theory that some scientists hold to a variant referred to as “punctuated equilibrium” that attempts to explain these jumps. But the sudden appearance of novel, complex lifeforms in completely functioning ecosystems isn’t a problem for Christians. It’s what we would expect from a creation superintended by an intelligent, powerful being – God.

Fact 5: Humans appeared late in the history of life

“Let us make man in our image, in our likeness … Thus, the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.” The Bible clearly states that humanity was the last of God’s creative acts on the sixth day. On the seventh day, God rested from creation. Unlike the previous six days, the seventh day does not conclude with the formula “and there was evening and there was morning,” suggesting that God’s rest from creation has continued.

According to the current scientific paradigm, homo sapiens appeared on earth 200,000 to 300,000 years ago. Although this timeline is still hotly debated, man has only been present for about 0.007% of the earth’s 4.5-billion-year history. While many large life forms have gone extinct since humanity first arrived, very little innovation or increase in complexity has appeared since then. Evolutionary biologists might argue that this is due to the short geological time scale; nevertheless, mankind’s position at the end of the creative chain concurs with the biblical creation accounts.

Fact 6: Humanity originated from the general vicinity of Middle East

“A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters.” Genesis 2 mentions four rivers that flowed from the Garden of Eden. Two of these rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, are clearly identified as the same rivers that exist today in Mesopotamia. The other two rivers remain without modern analogues, so the exact location of Eden is still a mystery. After the Fall, Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden and humanity began to multiply from there. At least two major dispersals occurred due to the Flood and the Tower of Babel.

Secular anthropology proposes that homo sapiens originated from the Horn of Africa, in the far eastern portion of the continent. This widely accepted “Out of Africa” model is based on archaeological evidence and genetic studies. A casual glance at a globe reveals that the proposed origin of homo sapiens is geographically close to the Arabian Peninsula, which contains Mesopotamia and the “fertile crescent” on its northern border with Asia. While one could argue that the Bible, as an ancient near-eastern document, would naturally situate humanity’s creation in the Middle East, its proximity to the secularly proposed origin is remarkable.

Not Just a Coincidence

Just think about how Genesis differs from other religions regarding these six facts. Where so many creation myths get them wrong, Genesis got it right. Contrast the Genesis saga with the lotus springing out of a god’s bellybutton in Hinduism, a giant sleeping on an egg in traditional Chinese folklore, or the dismembered god of Babylonia. Genesis is surprisingly restrained and grounded compared to other creation stories, while the similarities to modern scientific thought are unparalleled.

Secondary issues surrounding Creation – length of the days, death before the Fall, etc. – are important to Christians, but these are in-house discussions. Instead of diving into these complex debates with our nonbeliever friends, we should first point out how the major outlines of Genesis fit unnaturally well with modern scientific theory. The supposed conflict between Christianity and “science” has percolated secular culture to such a degree that they may not believe you at first. But zoom out from the minutiae, and you can demonstrate how this ancient book managed to get it right in at least six fundamental areas – and that demands an explanation.

 

Brandon Aldinger is a chemist with a doctoral degree who works in an industrial research laboratory. He’s had lifelong interest in issues of science and faith, and he is passionate about training fellow Christians to think clearly about and stand firm on their beliefs within a hostile culture.

The post A Minimal-Facts Case for Genesis appeared first on The Stream.

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