Answering Difficult Theological Questions

Question: Why would God use millions and billions of years to make life?

Answer: [1.] I believe that God has delighted to show man his smallness and to keep him humble by making a vast universe that spans vast amounts of time.  Man is extremely young in the universe and earth is extremely small in the universe.  This should promote humility.  Time is nothing to God who is outside of time. [2.] Either way, everyone would acknowledge that God delighted to use time (long or short) to create everything living.  Why He used time, we’re not sure.  It could also be a parable of how we as humans go from “glory to glory” until we are perfected in Christ.

Question: How and why would there be death before Adam fell?

Answer: Human death wouldn’t have existed before Adam.  Animal death (including pre-human death) was likely to show Adam the consequences of a life apart from God.  Pain and dying animals would provide a way to show Adam his need for God and what would be the consequences of rebelling and the meaning of death.  Adam wasn’t ignorant of what he was doing when he fell.

Question: Why would God use a process of designed evolution to create animals?

Answer: [1.] I don’t know about you, but I find the idea of designed, purposeful evolution to be incredibly ingenious.  It showed the infinite intelligence, wisdom and power of God.  [2.] It also showed Man what he was delivered from by God’s life-giving Spirit.  This was perhaps typical of salvation found in Christ.  Adam was delivered from death to have life.  [3.] Also, the evolution process showed how God makes all things beautiful in His time. [4.] It seems that God minimizes miracles for some reason.  This could have been because He wanted to glorify Christ and His miracles.  Fewer miracles before Christ would have provided a greater contrast between Him and previous times.

Question: Why wouldn’t God bring a global flood?

Answer: [1.] Humans are believed to have existed primarily in Mesopotamia early on.  God was judging humans because of their violence and other wickedness according to the Bible.  It wouldn’t make sense for God to destroy 100% of the land and animals just because of humans who lived in 1% (roughly) of the entire world.  [2.] A global flood would have probably created a wasteland for generations to come, which would have undone much of God’s Creation of animal kinds.  [3.] A global flood would have heated up the earth unbearably.  [4.] God probably had plans of leaving a record of the pre-Flood period for our modern era to uncover.

Question: Why wouldn’t God place Adam and Eve in a true paradise?

Answer: [1.] Eternal life is knowing God; paradise is primarily about eternal life, and thus knowing God.  In that sense, then, Adam and Eve had a paradise and they had this wonderful life, knowing God.  [2.] Paradise wouldn’t be true paradise if you could lose your paradise.  Therefore, an ultimate paradise doesn’t include a Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil; clearly, the Garden of Eden wasn’t the ultimate paradise.  [3.] Adam and Eve didn’t have anything to compare the Garden with; so, I’m sure they thought that it was wonderful and ideal.  [4.] God, knowing the future, had prepared the world in advance for sin to enter in, I believe.  [5.] A true paradise wasn’t required by God’s justice.  Just because Adam and Eve were sinless doesn’t imply that they deserved the best world in which to live.  Sinless angels, for example, do not live constantly in a paradise, since they are intimately involved with this corrupt world.

Question: Why would God use a pre-human to make Adam?

Answer: [1.] God was slowly building the ultimate animal (pre-humans) and making him fit to receive His image and a spirit.  That, I believe, was His primary purpose in using designed evolution (not random).  The whole purpose of the Creative process would have been almost pointless if man wasn’t taken from among the animals.  [2.] It is very important to realize that the only difference between Man and animals is our spiritual nature; taking an animal and breathing a spirit into it is the perfect way to show the only key difference between us and them.  Animals aren’t able to commune with God and they (likely) don’t live forever; that is the critical difference that we have, and it’s a huge difference.  We shouldn’t consider our intellect, creativity, or self-awareness to be miraculous gifts.  We delight in God alone and His great gift of a spirit that allows us to know and worship Him.  That is quite enough to distinguish us from them.  [3.] It is quite possible that Adam was able to experience a life without knowledge of God before God breathed into him a spirit.  He may have remembered being a spiritless creature that had no understanding of God and no concept of wonder and worship.  This “lifeless” experience would have amplified his sin in the Garden.  [4.] I think the idea of Adam being ‘redeemed’ from the animal kingdom makes a good analogy with salvation.

NEWS: Fierce Anolis Lizard Evolution Fizzles

Anolis lizards colonized the Caribbean from South America some 40 million years ago and quickly evolved a wide range of shapes and sizes. "When anoles first arrived in the islands there were no other lizards quite like them, so there was abundant opportunity to diversify," said author Luke Mahler of Harvard University. 

Free from rivals in their new island homes, Anolis lizards evolved differences in leg length, body size and other characteristics as they adapted to different habitats. Today, the islands of Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica and Puerto Rico — collectively known as the Greater Antilles — are home to more than 100 Anolis species, ranging from lanky lizards that perch in bushes, to stocky, long-legged lizards that live on tree trunks, to foot-long 'giants' that roam the upper branches of trees. ...

By doing so, they discovered that the widest variety of anole shapes and sizes arose among the evolutionary early-birds. Then, as the number of anole species on each island increased, the range of new body types began to fizzle.

Late-comers in lizard evolution underwent finer and finer tinkering as time went on. As species proliferated on each island, their descendants were forced to partition the remaining real estate in increasingly subtle ways, said co-author Liam Revell of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, NC.  --http://www.scientificcomputing.com/news-IN-Fierce-Anolis-Lizard-Evolution-Fizzles-061810.aspx

Here's my take on this story.  New information is no longer being expressed in animals.  Macroevolution has practically ended.  There was a long process of genetic information being 'unpacked' from the genomes of ancient plants and animals, but that unpacking has all but ended.  That means that evolution has slowed and is primarily microevolution and simple adaptations.  You will never see new, complex designs being formed in nature.  Never.  This 'fizzling' of evolution is precisely what I'd predict based on my understanding of created evolution.

Six Periods (Days) of Ancient History

Disclaimer: What follows is my personal interpretation of the Genesis 1 account in relation to the history of the universe and life on earth. Because science is a work-in-progress and the fossil record is still being uncovered, the dates given are approximate. Please note that my views listed below are not necessarily shared with any other old-earth creationist and only reflect a personal understanding of Genesis 1.

Pre-Creation Week - [c. 13.7 - 4.4 Ba] — Genesis 1:1 covers a vast amount of time. The “Big Bang” happened during this first verse ^{[c. 13.7 Ba]}. There was an expansion of the heavens, or universe, that took eons (described in other passages of the Bible; cf. Is. 42:5, 12; 48:13; 51:13; Jer. 10:12). Once the stars and galaxies formed, God selected the perfect star and formed a molten Earth from the stardust and planetesimals surrounding the Sun ^{[4.6-4.5 Ba]}. In reference to the creation of the earth, the Bible (Is 42:5) uses a word that means to overlay by hammering and to “beat,” which could indicate the compression that occurred and the progressive clumping together of planetesimals and other stardust.

Once the basic foundations of Earth were formed, the ocean started forming (as other passages in Job and Psalms say; cf. Job 38:8) primarily from steam within the earth bubbling up from molten magma and being expelled from volcanoes. This expelled water vapor and gases formed the early atmosphere. The water vapor in the atmosphere condensed down to a primitive, shallow global ocean ^{[4.5-4.3 Ba]}. Comets contributed to the global ocean, but likely only in a supplemental capacity.

Period 1 - [c. 4.4 - 4.0 Ba] — The atmosphere was much greater than today at this point, and it was probably hazy from methane and carbon dioxide, greatly blocking sunlight and causing significant darkness (cf. Job 38:9; Gen. 1:2) ^{[4.4-4.3 Ba]}. As the earth cooled and water condensed further into the Ocean, the atmosphere eventually cleared enough for daylight to be visible from the perspective of the ground (Gen. 1:3-5). A day and night cycle was thus established ^{[4.3-4.2 Ba]}. There was no continental land at this point, so the earth was a massive watery sphere covered by perpetual clouds.

Period 2 - [c. 4.0 - 3.5 Ba] — The water cycle then got formed after the earth’s surface cooled even more (Gen. 1:6-8) ^{[4.0-3.8 Ba]}. At this point, however, there was still massive cloud-cover that obscured the sun, moon, and stars. The sun would have looked like a large glow in the sky, likely—or not even have been discernible.

Period 3 - [c. 3.5 Ba - 500 Ma] — From that point, you had God forming the continental landmasses through plate tectonics (as briefly described in Psalm 104:5-9 and Job 38:10-11). The ocean waters were “gathered together” and dry land appeared ^{[3.5-3.2 Ba]}. This was a long process of land being gathered together and breaking apart and being re-gathered.

Then, I believe, though it’s not critical to this view of Creation, that God created amazing single-celled life with all the DNA encoding packed into it to form all living things. Evolution, adaption, and constructive mutation were designed into this cell(s). Probably at first, simple vegetative-like life grew underwater, like cyanobacteria, xenophyophores, and plankton ^{[~3.5-0.7 Ba]} (Gen. 1:11-12). Eventually, simple vegetation such as algae and fungi spread to the land as the first modern life forms on land ^{[1.0-0.9 Ba]}. This vegetation started forming into recognizable plant life ^{[750-500 Ma]}, with lynches, mosses, liverworts, and ferns being some of the earliest modern plant life (although prehistoric, strange life existed on the land much earlier ^{[<1 Ba]}).

Biblically Unrecorded History: Meanwhile, prehistoric marine animals (e.g. trilobites, sponges) were popping up in the Ocean ^{[650-550 Ma]}. For the most part, this prehistoric, intermediary marine life eventually went extinct and wasn’t intended to be a part of God’s final product for the ecosystem. Most or all of these creatures were 'soul-less'. Therefore, Genesis doesn’t mention these intermediary, marine life-forms. Prehistoric fish formed ^{[c. 530 Ma]} that also served as intermediary forms leading to modern fish kinds. (For reference, these fish developed long after primitive forms of vegetation on the land.) Insects also started appearing not long after these prehistoric fish and much earlier than the angiosperms ^{[450-350 Ma]}. Cockroaches, dragonflies, and several other flying insects were early modern kinds of insects. The Bible doesn’t record the creation of insects.

Eventually, after the prehistoric marine life were formed, more complex vegetation appeared like trees, bushes, and some herbage, perhaps (Gen. 1:12) ^{[450-300 Ma]}. Fruitful trees and grasses (angiosperms) didn’t form until much later ^{[300-200 Ma]}, well into Period 4 and maybe even in the first half of Period 5, but the formation of all modern vegetation is a process that the Bible regards as a single process that started in Epoch 3. The order of the creation of vegetation was: (1) simple vegetation without seeds ^{[c. 3.5 Ba]}, (2) simple plants with seeds/spores ^{[c. 600 Ma]}, (3) fruitful trees and other plants ^{[c. 250 Ma]} (Gen. 1:11-12).

Period 4 - [c. 500 - 250 Ma] — Sometime after vegetation was forming on the land, the cloud cover began to become less dense (Gen. 1:14-18) ^{[500-350 Ma]}. The simple vegetation and plants that were proliferating likely helped in the removal of carbon-dioxide and pollutants which caused the atmosphere to clear. The actual sun, moon, and stars became visible, and useful for signs and seasons and marking days, months, and years. From the standpoint of the surface of the earth, these celestial bodies had just been put 'in the sky'.

Period 5 - [c. 250 - 65 Ma] — After almost all the basic kinds of plants had formed on the land, there was a massive extinction event that killed off most of the prehistoric marine life and 95-97% of all life in the oceans ^{[c. 252 Ma]}. The oceans were depleted of life. God spoke to the oceans and marine life and told them to fill up the oceans with modern marine animals (Gen. 1:20). The marine life exploded and many modern kinds of sea life came into existence (Gen. 1:21) ^{[250-160 Ma]}. Also, not long after this time on the geological timescale, God started forming birds ^{[160-125 Ma]}. The order of these events was: (1) filling of the oceans with modern fish ^{[250-125 Ma]}, (2) formation of birds ^{[190-125 Ma]}.

Biblically Unrecorded History: Meanwhile, around the same time period, prehistoric animals on the land (e.g. dinosaurs, prehistoric mammaliaformes) were popping up ^{[250-150 Ma]}, though there were amphibious animals on land previously ^{[c. 400-360 Ma]}. Most of these prehistoric, intermediary land animals eventually went extinct and weren’t intended to be a part of God’s final product for the ecosystem. They also were probably soul-less (emotionally-simple) animals. Consequently, just like with the prehistoric marine life, Genesis doesn’t record the formation of these prehistoric animals. These animals were nothing more than a stepping stone to get to modern land animals.

Period 6 - [c. 65 Ma - 65 Ka] — Then, after the formation of the first birds ^{[190-125 Ma]}, modern land animals proliferated on the land from the prehistoric land animals (Gen. 1:24-25) ^{[65-10 Ma]}. Specifically, Genesis mentions livestock ^{[50-10 Ma]} (easily-domesticated animals), wild animals ^{[90-50 Ma]} (spirited, larger quadrupeds, perhaps), and creeping animals ^{[150-60 Ma]} (small, soulful animals that scurry along the ground—not insects). The order of these things is not specified precisely, since v.24 has one order and v.25 has a different order.

Over eons, God was shaping animals into His desired final forms (kinds reproducing after their kinds). Man, as the pinnacle of His Creation, took the longest to form. God made pre-humans that had greater intelligence than other animals (Homo sapiens). Evidence suggests that they were likely able to make fire and bury their dead with some symbolic behavior. Pre-humans were upright and intelligent and the animals learned to fear them ^{[2 Ma – 65 Ka]}. Most human-like animals—other Homo species—died out before God created Adam and Eve (Gen. 1:26-31).

Basic Problems with Uncreated Evolution

(Note: I'm obviously using "evolution" in the broadest sense, such that it includes the evolution of stars, galaxies, and planets.)

1) IN THE BEGINNING… There are no good scientific evidences that give us an explanation of where the universe with its set of laws came from, or how matter won out over antimatter. Scientists are constantly coming up with theories to try to explain the Big Bang or how the initial formation of the universe happened, and yet they have no evidence to support their theories. The Bible says, “In the beginning God created …” the universe. It was created from nothing, and so far scientists are stumped to find an evidentially-validated alternative idea for the beginning of all things. It was a miracle. 

2) ORIGINAL CELLULAR LIFE… Scientists are “clueless” about the beginning of cellular life. There are theories (always theories), but no evidence to strongly support any of the theories. How did life and complexity come about? The only reasonable answer is that God made the cell-design and encoded within it all the necessary information and designs for all of life to spring forth in time. I don’t think it can be overemphasized that scientists are completely stumped to come up with a complete theory that is widely accepted as the way that life began. There are many imagined concepts of how it could have happened, but only simple concepts that aren’t validated by evidence. It was a miracle.

3) ANCIENT GENETIC COMPLEXITY… All animals share basic genetic codes. Many of these are complex designs essential for life. Scientists are increasingly puzzled, it seems, about the amount of complex genetic information that was apparently already in existence before animals even existed. Some of the information seems to be specifically tailored for animals, but it existed before animals. The most obvious answer is not acceptable for atheistic evolutionists: an intelligent Creator designed libraries of information for all life forms. It was a miracle.

4) HUMAN REASON, SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS, AND SPIRITUALITY… Finally, scientists are unsure as to how early “people” (more like apes) somehow gained full self-awareness and high intelligence and spirituality. It just happened. There are no good theories validated by evidence that can explain how an animal became human—how the human intellect became so much more superior to any animal intellect. The Bible says, “God created …” man; He supernaturally breathed a spirit into a human body. So far, no scientist can remotely refute that point on the basis of evidence. It was a miracle.

Genesis 1 - A Better Translation

¹In the beginning, God had created the heavens and the earth.

²The earth had become without form and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep. Now the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the water.

³Then God said, “There shall come to be light,” and there was coming to be light. ⁴And God was observing that the light was good. And God was separating the light from the darkness. ⁵God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. Then there was dusk and there was dawn. –Period 1.

⁶Then God said, “There shall come to be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and it shall separate the water from the water.” ⁷So God was making the expanse and separating the water that was under the expanse from the water that was above the expanse. And it was becoming so. ⁸And God called the expanse Heaven. Then there was dusk and there was dawn. –Period 2.

⁹Then God said, “The water under heaven shall be gathering together into one place, and the dry land shall be appearing.” And it was becoming so. ¹⁰God called the dry land Earth, and the water that was gathered together He called Oceans. And God was observing that it was good.

¹¹And God said, “The ground shall cause vegetation to be sprouting forth, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was becoming so. ¹²The ground was causing vegetation to be brought forth, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God was observing that it was good. ¹³Then there was dusk and there was dawn. –Period 3.

¹⁴Then God said, “There shall become lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And they shall be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, ¹⁵and they shall be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was becoming so. ¹⁶Now God was furnishing the two great lights: the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light (and the stars) to rule the night. ¹⁷So God appointed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, ¹⁸to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God was observing that it was good. ¹⁹Then there was dusk and there was dawn. –Period 4.

²⁰Then God said, “The waters shall swarm with swarms of living souls, and birds shall fly above the earth across the face of the expanse of heaven.” ²¹So God was creating the great sea creatures and every living soul that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God was observing that it was good. ²²Then God blessed them by saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the water in the oceans! And, birds shall multiply on the earth.” ²³Then there was dusk and there was dawn. –Period 5.

²⁴Then God said, “The earth shall be bringing forth living souls according to their kinds: livestock and creeping animals and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was becoming so. ²⁵So God was making the beasts of the earth according to their kinds, and the livestock according to their kinds, and every animal that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God was observing that it was good.

²⁶And God said, “We shall make man in Our image, after Our likeness. And they shall have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of heaven and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping animal that creeps on the earth.” ²⁷So God was creating man in His Own image. In the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

²⁸And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of heaven and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” ²⁹And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. ³⁰And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of heaven and to every animal that creeps on the earth, everything that has the living soul, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. ³¹And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good. Then there was dusk and there was dawn. –Period 6.

Purpose of This Blog

No, unfortunately I'm not a scientist. (In case anyone is interested, my highest degree of education is a bachelor's degree.) I'm just a lowly person who likes to speak his mind.  One of my passions is the history of the universe.  How did everything get formed?  Another one of my passions is the fossil record.  New discoveries are popping up almost daily.  I believe in a form of evolution from all the evidence I've seen.  I do follow the evidence where it leads, and in this case it led to evolution.  However, I'm also a devout Christian, and I fully believe the Bible is God's Word.  I am a solid creationist.  A contradiction?  I think not.

My conclusion of all the evidence in nature is that evolution is true, but it had to have been a designed form of evolution.  Evolution as Darwin saw it is bankrupt and an untenable theory, though he got a couple of points right.  From what I can tell, simple life did evolve into complex life, but not by accident or by random happenstance.  Lots of randomness was involved, but it wasn’t the randomness that produced the complexity of life.  No, complexity came from an infinitely Wise Creator.

The purpose of this blog is to promote this theory: evolution was a carefully designed process.  The original cellular life on earth was miraculously created by God.  The first life had complex genetic codes built into it to allow for rapid adaptation, macroevolution, beneficial mutation, and the expression of new body parts.  The design for an eye, for example, was already existing within the genome of the first cellular life.  So, too, were the designs of many complex components already stored within the first life.  From the study of genomes, one can see that complex designs can be latently stored within them.  (For example, eyeless cave fish have been found to produce offspring with eyes when bred together.)

There are many questions I hope to answer.  Is this theory falsifiable?  Is there evidence for this theory as opposed to general evolutionary theory?  Doesn’t this contradict the Bible’s account of creation?  Why would God use an evolutionary process to create?

I also hope to comment on current news items that pertain to evolution.  It’s my hope to show that more and more evidence is surfacing to support this theory.

Stay tuned.