genesis
Merriam Webster Dictionary
noun
gen·e·sis ˈjen-ə-səs
: the origin or coming into being of something : the process or mode of origin
Premise 1: The Bible unapologetically explains the origins of life as a super-natural event that can never be fully understood by man
Regardless of what you may think about the Bible one thing that everyone can appreciate is it’s candor concerning creation. The book of Genesis (which is the reports the events of creation and beginnings as an historical account. It’s as if the author assumes that it is obvious the whole process of life’s origin on earth was miraculous and superintended by a powerful outside of nature.
A careful reading of Genesis Chapter 1 will reveal that the author never equivocates about how creation took place super-naturally. The author never stipulates that what he is writing does or has to make scientific or human sense—He knows it won’t…
Even Einstein voiced frustration at mere observation without causal knowledge:
I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts—the rest are details
Albert Einstein
Throughout the Bible creation is described as something that can be observed and only partially explained the miraculous of how the world and the Universe were spontaneously created from nothing has been left shrouded in mystery. The Bible never portrays God’s infinite intellect, power and creativity as something that can be fully grasped by His created beings.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
Isaiah 55:8-9
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
The Bible mentions the Creation event over 100 times and several of those times there is observational description that can be studied in science. But most of those times it is a historical reference to a one time event and is proclaimed by fiat (latin for let it be done).
An objective survey of these instances in scripture concludes firmly that creation was a super-natural and miraculous event that natural man would never be able to understand fully but only be able to describe.
The most comprehensive and advanced study of the cell, molecules, atomic energy, DNA, quantum physics has only served to widen the gulf and expose a bigger universe of “unknowability” between how God did it if indeed He did.
Premise 2: The Bible explains what the Big Bang Theory tries to explain
While Genesis 1:1-27 is just a brief summary of how creation and the origin of life happened, and objective survey will reveal preludes to modern scientific discovery. The name of the first book of the Bible is Genesis. It literally means “origins” and “beginnings“.
The real Big Bang
Herbert Spencer a well known biologist and anthropologist discovered that all the reality in the universe can be contained in five categories:
- Time
- Force
- Action
- Space
- Matter
This is fundamentally what the first line in Genesis entails:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth
Genesis 1:1
- Time (In The Beginning(
- Force (God)
- Action (Created)
- Space (Heavens)
- Matter (Earth and Universe)
This creation model does not contradict the laws of physics it creates them and it explains first cause which everything that begins to be must have. It also explains how life emerged not from non-life which is impossible but from a life creator.
If science has shown that God does not exists, it has not been by appealing to Big Bang Cosmology. The hypothesis of God’s existence and the facts of contemporary cosmology are consistent.
David Berlinski; American Author and Philosopher, Princeton and Columbia
Premise 3: The Bible agrees what the Fossil Record has confirmed
And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so
Genesis 1:24-25
The fossil record which has been extensively researched and explored does not affirm evolution but rather the creation account. Species appear suddenly and fully intact.
Major transitions in the biological evolution show the same pattern of sudden emergence of diverse forms at a new level of complexity. The relationships between major groups within an emergent new class of biological entities are hard to decifer and do not seem to fit the tree pattern that follow Darwin’s original proposal—in each of the pivotal nexuses in life’s history, the principal “types” seem to appear rapidly and fully equipped with the signature features of the respective new level of biological organization.
Eugen B Koonin; The Biological Big Bang Model for the Major Transitions in Evolution Biology
I saw in the fossil records rapid burst of change, new species appearing seemingly out of nowhere and then remaining unchanged for millions of years hauntingly reminiscent of creation
Max Pagel; Oxford Biologist
And we find many of them already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as thought they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say, this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationist…the only alternative explanation of the sudden appearance of so many complex animal types in the Cambrian era is divine creation.
Richard Dawkins; The Blind Watchmaker
The fossil record and the Bible agree—organisms appeared on the earth fully formed. All fossil evidence shows they were fully-formed from the bottom layer up or at the beginning.
Premise 4: The Bible agrees with what Genetics has discovered
Genetic specificity and the sudden appearance of species are vividly described in the book of Genesis. It even has the word gene contained in it.
Each of the 8.7 million documented species has it’s own totally distinct DNA code. DNA is genetic material that contains an operative code. Every living organism from the smallest cell to a large man, and everything in between has. The operation of every living thing is dependent on that encoded information and every different living thing has a completely different code.
Remember, natural selection only operates on the information that is already contained in the genes — it does not produce new information. This is consistent with the Bible’s account of origins which states that God created distinct kinds of animals and plants, each to reproduce after its own kind.
First there were plants
Then God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit after their kind, with seed in them
Genesis 1:11
The word kind is the word (kin) in Hebrew word which means species. It is where we get the our English word kin or kinfolk from. The Bible implies specifically that there numerous species of plants created all at once that were not descendant of each other, and that their DNA was in their seed.
Did You Know:
More than 35,000 new species (kinds) of flowering plants may be lying undiscovered in cupboards around the world. Botanists believe that of the 70,000 flowering plants yet to be found, over half may already be in collections awaiting classification (BBC.com)
Next there were fish and birds
So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind
Genesis 1:21
Once again several taxonomic species (this time fish and birds) were created all at once according the their genetic classifications (kinds or species)
Did You Know:
Biologist are discovering 150 new species of fish every year. Experts estimate that characterising the 5,000 species of marine fish that are now unknown will take another 30 years. (Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of Unesco)
Animals, Insects, Reptiles, Amphibians, and Bacteria
Then God said, “Let earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: a cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind”; And God made the beast of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind
Genesis 1:24-25
Notice the double amplification that each group is distinct from each other genetically, created all at once with no ancestral descent.
Did You Know
Conservative estimates suggest that anywhere between 2 million and 30 million of the world's insects have not been named yet (Smithsonian)
Finally humans
Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
27 So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
Genesis 1:26-28
The word “mankind” contains the same genetic connotation that the word “kind” did with other plants, animals, birds, and insect species.
Man is the only species not coupled or listed with others. The Bible refers to man as the only species made in God’s image which means men and women have the attribute of cognition—which is the ability to conceive of being created, to observe all that has been created, and to ponder the majesty and power demonstrated in creation.
Premise 5: The Bible agrees with the Laws of Physics
| What the laws of Science and the Bible agree on | Biblical Explanation | Evolutionist Without Explanation |
| Law of First Causes: There must be a first cause | In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1:1. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the eath and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. Psalm 90:2 God is the first cause. He is eternal and has no beginning who created the universe at a fixed point in time | If matter is not eternal, its first emergence into being is a miracle beside which all others dwindle into absolute insignificance. William Knight |
| The fossil record shows the sudden appearance of species fully formed | God on created plants, animals, insects, fish, and birds according to their kinds on the 3rd and 4th day suddenly and fully in tact, mature, and ready to reproduce. Genesis 1:11-20 | The remarkably complex forms of animals we see today suddenly appeared…This moment, right at the start of the Earth’s Cambrian Period…marks the evolutionary explosion that filled the seas with the earth’s first complex creatures…This is Genesis material. Richard Monastersky; Science News |
| DNA is the blueprint of life that contains the information that makes a species what it is, and keeps it from being what it isn’t | Then God said let the land produce vegetation …according to its kinds. So God created the great creatures of the sea …according to its kinds Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds But God gives a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. Not all flesh is the same, people have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. 1 Corinthians 15:38-39 | “Does it sound to you as though it would need a miracle to make randomly jostling atoms join together into a self-replicating molecule? Well at times it does to me too.” Richard Dawkins |
| The Law of Biogenesis : Life must come from life | God is life, and the source of all life. All things came into being by Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. John 1:3-4 | There are only two possibilities as to how life arose. One is spontaneous generation arising to evolution; the other is the supernatural creative act of God. There is no third possibility. Spontaneous generation, that life arose from non-living matter was scientifically disproved 120 years ago by Louis Pasture and others. That leaves us with the only possible conclusion that life arose as a supernatural creative act of God. Michael Walker, Senior Lecturer Anthropology Sydney University |
| Law of Information Theory: Information must come from a source of intelligence | Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; His understanding is unsearchable. Isaiah 40:28 | Neither the primeval amoeba type of cell nor the inorganic matter of which it is constructed contains such highly specialized, holistic information, which is necessary to transform from the alleged amoeba into, say, an anthropoid ape. Is it legitimate to assume that such incredible amounts of information arose spontaneously out of thin air by pure chance?” AE Wilder Smith; Organic Chemist |
| Fine-Tuning of Universe | Lift up your eyes and see. Who has made these stars? It is the One who leads them out by number. He calls them all by name. Because of the greatness of His strength, and because He is strong in power, not one of them is missing. Isaiah 40:26 | Our complex universe could have emerged only if the laws of physics are very close to what they are. The Laws, which enable the universe to come into being, seem themselves to be the product of exceedingly ingenious design. Paul Davies, Physicist |
Quantum Physics points to the same “Creative Force” the Bible says is God
All the particles in this universe have obeyed all the laws in this universe since the universe came into existence. Many scientist call this a control component and submission component system. Max Planck; the father of Quantum Mechanics and Noble Prize winner talked about how this control component is actually God.
As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.
Max Planck; Father of Quantum Mechanics and Noble Prize Winner
The Mysterious Quantum Leap
In 1927 Werner Heisenberg, a German physicist, found that when a photon strikes an atom it boosts an electron into a higher orbit. And when that occurs, the electron moves from the lower to the upper orbit – listen to this – simultaneously, without having traversed the intervening space. That’s a quantum leap. What happens is the electron ceases to exist at one point and simultaneously comes into existence at the other point. What is amazing is this unexplainable phenomenon is essential to the atom and is happening in every atom all the time.
“The atom is in one state and moves to another, and you can’t picture what it is in between, so you call this a quantum jump. In quantum mechanics, you don’t ask what’s the intermediate state because there ain’t no intermediate state. It passes from one to the other in God’s mysterious way.”
I. Rabi; Columbia Physicist to The New York Times
Science can only try to explain what it calls a control and sustain component. They cannot create a single new atom much less replicate the control system which Max Planck called a solar system all it’s own within a small atom.
Other examples of control and sustain components which can be described by science but never fully understood
- The force of gravity. This is a law everyone is familiar with. And after adjusting for variables, it has a constant value—the same everywhere in the universe.
- The speed of light. This value is always 300,000 kilometers per second.
- The weight of electrons, protons, and neutrons that make up atoms. These are all constant and unchanging.
- The internal forces that hold together these particles within the atomic structure are also constant.
The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth—all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together
Colossians 1:15-17
The Bible proclaims the who, what, and why of that which Noble Prize winning Physicist, Geneticist, and Molecular Biologist are only privileged to observe and describe. The Bible affirms what it considers obvious—that the power and intelligence nature and science are revealing day to day is far, far above full human comprehensibility.
Premise 6: The Bible says the created order is obvious proof of God’s existence—and His infinite power and Intelligence
1 The heavens proclaim the glory of God.
Psalm 19:1-4
The skies display his craftsmanship.
2 Day after day they continue to speak;
night after night they make him known.
3 They speak without a sound or word;
their voice is never heard.[a]
4 Yet their message has gone throughout the earth,
and their words to all the world.
The Bible says that just by looking at Universal Laws and Constants, the sudden appearance of animal and plant life in the fossil record without any in between transitions, the beauty and design of millions upon millions living species, DNA, and the complexity and design of whole species, organs, that everyone on the globe see the creative evidence of a super intelligent, super powerful, super creative God.
“There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard.” In other words, creation itself is silent revelation, but it’s a revelation that’s unmistakable.
The Bible and Science indicate that the universe is almost as infinite as he is. The more science learns about space, the biosphere, and life at the cellular level the more they realize they have just scratched the surface.
Posterity will one day laugh at the foolishness of modern materialistic philosophers. The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator.
Louis Pasteur founder of microbiology and immunology
Creation is God’s emphatic appeal to man to recognize His Deity
1 The heavens proclaim the glory of God.
The skies display his craftsmanship.
2 Day after day they continue to speak;
night after night they make him known
In other words, day and night, everything in the universe speaks of a Creator God.
“There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard.” In other words, creation offers a silent revelation, but it’s a revelation that’s unmistakable. The Bible “Their line has gone out through all the earth, their utterances to the end of the world.” Everyone on the globe; scientist and non-scientist alike can look out and see the creative evidence of a Creator God.
Final Premise: The Bible says that to deny God as Creator is a suppression of revealed truth
18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
Romans 1:18-20
The Bible says that God’s eternal power and divine nature are plainly exhibited in creation. The word plainly means (manifest). This is not a secret, obscure revelation and you don’t have to be an intellectual. Creation plainly reveals the existence of a God who is majestic, transcendent, and powerful. Creation plainly reveals the infinite distance between creatures and him.
Johannes Kepler the founder of modern astronomy, and discoverer of the “Three Planetary Laws of Motion” when noting the order and design of the universe said “the undevout astronomer is mad”.
What Creation reveals about God’s power an divine nature
- God is eternal before and outside of time: Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. Psalm 90:2
- God is infinitely powerful: For He spoke, and it came to be; He commanded and it stood firm. Psalm 336-9
- God is infinitely intelligent: It is He who made the earth by His power, who established the world by His wisdom, and by His understanding stretched out heavens. Jeremiah 10:12
- He is a God of infinite order and beauty: Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them. Psalm 111:2-3
- He is a law maker and law upholder: Have I not made my covenant with day and night and established the laws of heaven and earth. Jeremiah 33:25-36
Since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood by what has been made
Romans 1:20
The evidence of at least some kind of creator God is so universal and profound that almost every known civilization on earth has at least one deity focused religion that attributes creative power to a God of some kind.
Whether an academic or a primitive native— Nature’s complexity, order, design, vastness and beauty all plain indicators that God uses to reveal two things to all mankind:
- His existence
- Man’s finiteness—the great gulf between himself and God
Nature is God’s invitation to seek more knowledge of Him not just more knowledge of the world He created.