CREATION, SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE
Genesis 1:1-2:3
Bob Marcaurelle bmarcaurelle@charter.net
For brevity and beauty of composition and of expression, the Bible account of creation has no equal. At the center stage is the Creator-God who acts (1:1-2) and the matter and energy of the universe comes into existence with an orderliness that makes it capable of becoming a bountiful and beautiful dwelling place for the highest creation of all, man. From original creation which is “formless and void” (1:2) God moves to the seven days or periods of gradual formation (1:3-2:3) where the raw materials of the universe become a suitable home for you and me.
Energy for all life is bound up in light and so God spoke to His original CREATION-1 and light, from the original explosion of creation, from billions of suns, came into being (1:3-5). This was day one.
The pieces of molten plasma of the burning universe raced outward through space and as they solidified and had other explosions, they formed the stars and planets in the various galaxies in what we call space (1:6-8). This was day two.
Now God picks out a tiny speck in a tiny galaxy we call the Milky Way. We call this speck “Earth.” God allowed this burning ball to cool and slowly He separated the land from the seas. His powerful word went forth to the land and sea and vegetation, all we know as grass and trees and crops and flowers, began to form (1:9-13). This was day three.
Two other pieces or original creation wind up close to us and God turns to them - the sun and the moon. The sun will rule our days and the moon our nights (1:14-19). This was day four.
Now God CREATES- 2 again! Perhaps using the elements of the earth and sea, He brings into existence fish and birds and animals and orders them to reproduce (1:20-25). This was day five and part of day six!
(This sequence of events is based on comparing the National Geographic book, "Our Universe" and Genesis.)
Now for the reason for it all is CREATION 3- man, the one creature made in God’s image and capable of fellowship with Him. God created man, apart from the animals, out of the dust of the earth. Then from man God created woman, and his home was a garden (1:26-31; 2:4-25). This was the last part of day six. After this, on day seven, which is still going on, God rested from His creative work (2:1-3).
God tells us that He made the worlds and even tells us a tiny little bit about how He did it, although that is not important. Today we look at God and His world through this creation account thinking about its scientific accuracy.
Not all share our appreciation for the Genesis account of creation. To some it is absurd because it seems to violate the findings of modern science in its view of creation. Genesis, they say, says the universe was created in six days and science says it was a process involving billions of years.
Genesis says man is the special creation of God, created separate and distinct from the animals. Science says man, along with all other life forms, evolved. To this very day people believe that you cannot believe both science and the Bible because they are hopelessly contradictory. This is simply not true. All truth is God’s truth and the FACTS of science will agree with the FACTS of scripture. Our problem is separating FACT from FICTION.
I was tempted here to pass over this controversy as many men of God, whom I admire, have done. They do so because they know the Bible is not a book of science and because they know we accept creation, not as the result of arguments and proof, but by faith. The Bible says, “By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God” (Heb. 11:3).
I know the Bible is not a textbook of science. I agree with Augustine who said the Bible is not written to tell us how the heavens go but how to go to heaven. I agree with Marcus Dods (The Expositor’s Bible) that we don’t need an inspired Bible to tell us the sun rules the daylight and the moon the night and that the real message is that they were placed there by God. I agree with Augustine that proof for the believer is UNNECESSARY and for the unbeliever is UNCONVINCING.
In spite of all this, however, I feel the need to affirm, at the beginning of our journey through scripture, the accuracy of the Word of God, in all matters upon which it speaks, including its remarks about our physical universe. Why? Because the credibility of the Bible as our authority is at stake. If the Bible is wrong in areas, like science, which we can verify, how can we expect people to believe it isn’t also wrong, in matters of faith and practice, which we cannot verify? My mother was saved late in life. She never went to a Bible class and yet she showed wisdom greater than many of our so-called scholars when she said to me, “Bobby, if you can’t believe ALL the Bible, how can you believe ANY of it?”
A case in point is Einstein. In his autobiography, he tells of an exciting but brief religious expe¬ence in his boyhood. It was soon displaced by unbelief when the reading of certain books convinced him that many things in the Bible could not be true. A Lutheran pastor who spoke in one of our church’s seminars had a friend who witnessed to Einstein a short time before his death. The old gentleman listened kindly, but this was his response, “I wish I had your simple faith. I would gladly trade all of my knowledge for it, but, sir, faith for me is impossible.” Thinking about the Bible and its so-called conflict with scientific truth, I want to say several things.
I. BE SURE OF YOUR BIBLE FACTS
Not everything claimed as a Bible fact is a fact. For example, in the seventeenth century, Archbishop Usher studied the genealogical tables of the Bible and concluded that creation took place in 4004 B.C. Some Bibles include this date in their margins and thus for three hundred years people were told that the Bible says creation took place in six days, in the year 4004 B.C.
The truth is the Bible claims neither of these so-called facts. There are gaps in the genealogical tables since God’s design was not to list every family that came from Adam. Also, there is no mention of any date of creation.
Some assume the Bible teaches that God created or fashioned this universe in six 24-hour days. The word “day” in scripture is often used of extended periods of time. In fact, Genesis 2:4 calls the whole creative period “the day that the Lord God made heaven and earth.” There is nothing in the Bible to contradict or to verify the idea of billions of creative years.
For years devout men of God believed the Bible taught that the earth was the fixed center of the uni¬verse and that the sun traveled around it day by day. Then in 1543 the great war between the Bible and science began. Copernicus published his monumental work setting forth the heliocentric view of the universe, we now know is true, namely that the sun is the center of our solar system and the earth and other planets revolve around it.
Galileo (1564-1642) with his telescope later proved Copernicus right and went on to teach also that the earth, not fixed, rotated on its axis. Both men were ridiculed. Galileo was attacked by both Roman Catholics and Protestants as a heretic. Luther called him a “fool” and said his telescope was an instrument of the devil. Even the scholarly John Calvin entered the fray. He answered these liars with Psalm 93:1, “The world also is established so that it cannot be moved.”
History reveals that science was right. But it was not the Bible that was in the wrong. It never specifically says this earth is the fixed center around which the sun moves. That was man’s interpretation of what it says. When the Bible speaks of the sun coming up or going down, it is using the language of APPEARANCES, the language of the common man. It is not speaking scientifically. When we say, the Sun went down, we are not speaking as scientists. Be sure of your Bible facts.
II. BE SURE OF YOUR SCIENTIFIC FACTS
Science is based upon observation and deduction and as new powers of observation arise, facts sometimes are shown to be theories that were wrong. Science, being a quest for truth, is the first to admit this. Scientific knowledge and discoveries are made with blinding speed. With the microscope exploring the inner world and the telescope probing outer space, our knowledge easily doubles every ten years.
There are more scientists alive today than have lived in all the years before. Any standard textbook on science is partly out of date before it goes into print. It goes to the scrap heap in five to ten years. One writer said, “I refuse to write a book on religion and science because the science it will be out of date before it goes into print.”
I believe the one area where science has not been true to its deductive method, and has become a philosophy, a world-view, is in the area of evolution. “Scientism” arrogantly asserts, with the slimmest evidence, that man and all animals evolved from a huge, physical "mass". It arrogantly asserts with the slimmest of evidence, that man’s ancestors were primates (monkeys). The reason for the arrogance is that it will not even consider the possibility of a Creator because He cannot be proven in a laboratory.
When you think about it, evolution is the only possible theory where you can take the idea of God out of our thinking. When you ask an evolutionist where the great mass of matter making up our universe came from, he smugly says, “We do not deal with ultimate origins, but only with observable facts.” The truth is, both views are based on faith and not reason. The creationist believes in an uncreated CREATOR and the evolutionist believes in an uncreated CREATION. Both are absurd rationally. Reason says, “Every effect must have a cause”. If you see a ball rolling, somebody or something made that ball and something made it start rolling.
William Jennings Bryan said, “I’d rather explain he marvelous mystery of human beings, by starting with an intelligent Creator and working DOWN, than with a pile of slime and working UP.” But more than the material is involved in this. The atheist hasn’t been born yet to get us to believe the courage of a soldier or the laughter of a baby are the products of time and slime. The Bible dismisses atheism with one verse, “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” Herschel Hobbs says, “He said it in his HEART; his HEAD knew better.”
III. BE PROUD OF YOUR BIBLE FACTS
We can be proud of the Bible’s SIMPLICITY. The Bible is not a textbook on science. It is God’s revelation of Himself and His will for us. His main object is communication. He wants to be understood. And thus He gives us His truth not in the jargon of the psychologist or in the technical terms of the biologist and geologist but in the everyday expressions of the common man.
Can you imagine what would have happened if God had given us the story of creation in technical, scientific terminology. My set of encyclopedias takes 20 pages to explain the tiny atom. And it uses words and ideas that are as Greek to me as hen scratching. With beautiful blending of poetry and history, the Bible pictures a week in the life of God where He created and fashioned our home on earth.
The Bible, in its simplicity, uses FIGURES OF SPEECH. Fosdick, in his "The Modern Use of the Bible" (p. 45-54), makes the mistake of taking most of them literally. He says the Bible teaches that the earth is flat and founded on an underlying sea (Ps. 136:6; Gen. 7:11). The heaven or sky is like an upturned bowl or canopy above it (Job. 37:18; Gen. 1:6-8; Isa. 40:22). There is a sea above this solid sky (Gen. 1:7) and rain comes down to us through openings, windows (Ps. 78:23; Gen. 7:11) in it.
To take such figures of speech literally is absurd. When Isaiah says God “stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them like a tent to dwell in. . .” (Isa. 40:22), he is speaking simply and beautifully in the language of poetry. He is not speaking scientifically at all.
We can also be proud of the Bible’s ACCURACY. As I studied creation in preparing these messages, I used two basic books. The first was Genesis, the Word of God. The second was “Our Universe” published by the National Geographic Society. The amazing thing to me was the broad agreement between the two.
Astronomers have discovered that the stars and planets that fill our heavens are racing outward into space at incredible speeds. Using computers they reverse the process and trace all of them back to an original explosion called “The Big Bang” between 12 and 20 billion years ago (pg. 216). With further deductions they conclude that about 4 billion years ago gas and dust particles combined to form the planet earth.
The word of God puts original creation first, long before it speaks of this earth. So does astronomy. The word of God speaks of the creation of light before it speaks of our sun. So does astronomy. It is unwise to try and prove that the Bible and science agree in every detail (God, the Atom and the Universe, James Reid, Zondervan). Why? Because science is always changing. If we marry the Bible to the science of today, we will find ourselves divorced tomorrow. But the fact of the broad, general agreement between Genesis and geology and the astronomy derived from men like Galileo is evident. The outstanding man of science, Sir William Dawson, said:
“The order of that vision of the creative work with which the Bible begins its history is so closely in harmony with the results worked out by the geological investigations that the correspondences have excited marked attention, and have been justly regarded as establishing the common authorship of nature and revelation.” (“Genesis - A Devotional Commentary”, W.H. Griffith Thomas; p. 31-32; Eerdmans, 1946).
Scientists have been reluctant to accept the Big Bang theory, says astronomer Robert Jastrow (Reader’s Digest, July 1981). Einstein was “irritated” by the thought. Why? Because it agreed in its essentials with the Bible and pointed to a time of creation and to a Creator. Philip Morrison of M.I.T. said, “I would like to reject the Big Bang theory, but I have to face the facts.” The problem is that the Big Bang theory traces cause and effect back to the First Cause “to which,” said Aquinas, “everyone gives the name God.” Jastrow, who calls himself an “agnostic in religious matters,” says
“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story has ended like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.” (Reader’s Digest, July 1981, p. 53).
Astronomy goes back and what does it find? It finds Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning GOD created the heavens and the earth.” James Jauncey, in his book “Science Returns to God”, says it is amazing how the order of creation in Genesis is extremely close to that given by the geologists. The "Abbe de Lapparent", one of the greatest contemporary geologists, said, “If I had to summarize in a few lines the main events of the history of the earth I would copy out again the first paragraphs of Genesis.” (Jauncey, p. 49).
By affirming the Bible’s scientific accuracy I admit to a prejudice. I prefer the Bible above all other witnesses. I have a closed mind - I believe God. When science disagrees with the Bible, I go with the Bible and pray that science will find the truth. When science agrees with the Bible, I rejoice and pray that science will not leave the truth.
This Book, though written amid cultures abounding with crude scientific theories, though written in the everyday language of the common man, has no crude, unscientific statements to embarrass the thinking man. And so we can look to heaven and thank our God for the sublime simplicity of His revelations, for the fact that the Shepherd or the Spaceman can read it with understanding. We can thank Him for the scientific accuracy of His revelations.
You can trust your Bible! It is an infallible book. This means that whenever the Bible speaks, no matter what the subject matter, it speaks the truth. It means that the Architect of the Universe and the Author of the Bible are one and the same. It means that there is nothing in the Bible that contradicts the true findings of modern science. Both the scientist and the theologian should search for truth, one in God’s created Word. And as each goes deeper and deeper, discarding theories that are false, the day will come when they shall arrive at the same spot - at the feet of the God of truth, the God of creation, the God of redemption, saying, with Isaac Watts:
The heavens declare Thy glory, Lord
In every star Thy wisdom shines;
But when our eyes behold Thy Word
We read Thy name in fairer lines.
