When you talk with atheists about science-Bible issues the atheists always claim that science has proved the Bible wrong on various issues such as Noah's flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Exodus from Egypt and the creation story in Genesis chapter 1. For Genesis chapter 1 they always say the young Earth creationist interpretation of Genesis chapter 1 is absolutely ridiculous and that science has discovered the real sequence of events. Then they say that Genesis 1 came from "ignorant shepherds in the Middle East". This is a clever move on their part because then they can claim that the Bible is wrong starting with the very first chapter.

But atheists never tell you about the old Earth creationist interpretation of Genesis chapter 1. In the old Earth creationist interpretation of Genesis 1, it turns out that the sequence of events is exactly what science has only recently discovered and the Bible had the correct sequence of events around 3400 years ago. The nicest conventional presentation of Genesis chapter 1 I have ever run into is in the book, Reading Genesis One by physicist Rodney Whitefield. Note: his old Earth interpretation still assumes presentism. It does not take into account the block universe concept from modern physics. Ignoring this issue does not change the key point presented in this essay: the Bible had the correct sequence of events a long time before science came along. It turns out it is easy to transform this interpretation using presentism into a block universe interpretation.

In Whitefield's book, he does a detailed study of Old Testament Hebrew and does so by using words and phrases from around the Bible to explain the words and phrases that occur in Genesis chapter 1. In this essay, I am not interested in how to interpret the words. In particular, there is the Hebrew word "yom" that is usually interpreted to mean a day but there are times when it means a period of time of unknown length. The young Earth creationist says each yom is 24 hours long and old Earth creationists say each yom could be a very long time, millions or billions of years. And then there is also the issue of how much time (if any) elapses between the "days". If you want to find out why Whitefield interprets words the way he does, read his book or get the free material on the book's website. I just want to show that an old Earth creationist interpretation of Genesis 1 is in accord with modern science. So, here, I am going to ignore the issue of how long each "yom" was and just look at the sequence of events.

Even though Whitefield's presentation is quite good, his translations sometimes come out as awkward English and so some of quotations below will be coming from the New Living Translation (NLT) of the Bible and I'll just mention what Whitefield had to say about the text.

Whitefield's translation of Genesis 1:1-2 is this:

There are many important items here. First, Whitefield interprets this to mean that the heavens and the Earth were created and so much of God's work is finished. It's afterwards, that God goes to work on the planet Earth for six "days". During those 6 "days" that follow, the Earth is modified to make it inhabitable and then the Earth is filled with life. I like to call this creation of the heavens and the Earth "day" zero. Young Earth creationists claim that this creation of the heavens and the Earth actually takes place on the first "day". Whitefield argues that the young Earth creationist position is wrong. So now, in just the first two verses, we have no indication of how long this part of creation took. Creation of the heavens and the Earth could have taken billions of years or seconds or fractions of seconds. We are not given any idea how long it was before God got around to His activities on "day" 1 when He began to modify the Earth.

Now, we have that the Earth was dark. In Job 38:8-9 God describes the condition of the early Earth, from the NIV we have this:

So it seems the answer for the darkness is thick clouds. Scientists think the Earth had thick clouds in the beginning.

Next, the verses tell us that the Earth was uninhabited and uninhabitable. Science thinks so too. There would have been no oxygen around until plants appear on the Earth.

The final important thing to notice is that the Earth was covered with water. These days, if you could shovel all the land into the oceans, the Earth would be covered by a 1.7 mile layer of water. How did the "ignorant shepherds in the Middle East" know that there was that much water around? It is only relatively recently that scientists have been finding evidence that the Earth was covered with water at one point. See for instance:

• Geoscientists use zircon to trace origin of Earth's continents.
• "Scientists reveal how continents first emerged out of the ancient waterworld"
• "When The Earth Dried Out"
• "Earlier Water On Earth? Oldest Rock Suggests Hospitable Young Planet"
• "Earth was barren, flat and almost entirely under water 4.4 billion years ago"
• "Early Earth less 'Hellish' than previously thought.".
  
  

In that last article there is this interesting paragraph:

So for a long time science had it wrong, while the Bible had it right from the very beginning!

For "day" 1 from the NLT we have:

Here, this is interpreted to mean that the cloud cover has lessened to the point where some light from the sun is getting through the clouds. Earth now has day and night.

For "day" 2 from the NLT we have:

The interpretation of this is that the clouds lessened to the point where you can see the horizon. I interpret this to mean that on "day" 1, Earth was still "lost in a fog". You would not be able to see the horizon. On "day" 2 the fog lifts to the point where you can see the horizon but the Earth is still covered in low clouds. It is only on "day" 4 that the clouds disperse to the point where the sun, moon and stars become visible.

A lot happens on "day" 3. First we have this from the NLT:

In addition to this command in Genesis 1, there is Psalm 104 from the NLT that says:

From recent science, we know that molten rock rose from the center of the Earth to form continents and tectonic plates. The plates began to move around and bump into each other and where they bumped they formed mountains (with thunder coming from the earthquakes!). So here in psalm 104 we have a nice poetic description of what happened on the ancient Earth and it was given long before science discovered it. (Note that verse 9 is excellent evidence that Noah's flood was NOT a global flood because God said he would never again let the seas cover the Earth.)

Also, there is more science to report. One scientist, Tovy Grjebine, has speculated that initially the whole Earth was covered with water. (See: "The moon as the origin of the Earth's continents" and "The Moon as Cause of the Formation of Earth's Continents: Complementary Elements") Grjebine says that if the moon was in a geosynchronous orbit around the Earth (meaning the moon was stuck in one place in the sky, like today's communication satellites), the first continent formed on the side of the Earth facing the moon. (Think about how the moon produces tides in the ocean.) In addition, Grjebine says this about the lighter elements that rose to the surface of the Earth:

So we have tectonic plates and continents forming. How would those "ignorant shepherds in the Middle East" know about that?

Next on "day" 3 from the NLT we have the issue of plants:

The first odd thing about the young Earth creationist interpretation is that in one 24-hour day the plants grew up and fruit trees had fruit. This is a lot to expect in one day! Things just don't grow that fast. The second odd thing about this is that in the young Earth creationist interpretation, every sort of plant came into being on this "day". Science says that fruit trees did not appear on Earth until fairly late in Earth's history. Whitefield shows that there is a Hebrew word involved that can be interpreted as "and it was so", meaning it all happened at once on that "day". Or, Whitefield shows how in a different place in the Bible, the word was translated as "and so it came to pass", meaning that over a long period of time some things happened. So here in Genesis 1 that key word should be interpreted to mean that plants started appearing on "day" 3 but they will be appearing on the following "days" as well. This removes the problem.

One more thing about plants. Notice that the Bible mentions that the LAND produced plants. The conventional thinking has been that plants started in the ocean and then moved to land. But then there is this: Researchers claim first plants DIDN'T come from the sea and lived on land hundreds of millions of years earlier than thought. So it may well turn out that the Bible beat science here too.

For "day" 4 from the NLT:

Young Earth creationists claim that the sun, moon and stars were created on this "day". The critics then ask where the light was coming from to grow the plants on "day" 3? Whitefield explains why this young Earth creationist interpretation is wrong. It has to do with the particular Hebrew verb that is used. He explains that the correct interpretation is that the sun, moon and stars started to appear at this time. This would be because the atmosphere was clearing up as the Earth cooled off.

"Day" 5 and the beginning of "day" 6 are unremarkable: various animals are created. This makes sense, animals must come after plants because animals depend on plants for food. But then on "day" 6, people are created. Christians usually say that Adam and Eve were real people who lived 6000 years ago and they were the first people on Earth. Science says that humans go back in time around 200,000 years. So there seems to be a real problem here. The usual old Earth creationist explanation, and the one that Whitefield endorses, is that Adam and Eve were the first humans to have souls. Humans before Adam and Eve were missing some vital spiritual capacity and so they would not be fully human like people are today. So, in this way, Adam and Eve can still be the first fully human, human beings on planet Earth.

It is interesting to compare Genesis 1 with other creation myths. For instance, there is Norse mythology. You can find a summary of the Norse creation myth in a little article on the net: The Creation of the Cosmos by Daniel McCoy. It is very remarkably different from Genesis 1. In the Norse creation myth this is what happens when some fire meets some ice:

So here, from plain water, a giant magically emerges. Then the drops of sweat from the giant magically turn into more giants. Later on:

And then:

McCoy, in an earlier version of the page that I do not have a copy of, went on to analyze the Norse creation myth and compare it with myths from other cultures. A key characteristic of the Norse and other creation myths is that life and gods can magically appear from what we know today is inanimate matter. These creation myths say that inside the matter there are spirits. It is what is called animism. Then McCoy pointed out that Genesis 1 has the first description of creation where the matter in the world is inert. It has no spiritual properties that enable it to turn into something else. With the rest of the world thinking that matter is magical, how is it that the Israelites came up with something entirely different? This idea helped make modern science possible.

In ancient times, when Genesis 1 was being written, the cultures around the Middle East, and indeed around the whole world, were worshiping the sun, the moon, the stars, the trees and so on because they thought they were gods and if people pleased these gods, these gods could do them some favors. Humans in that era even carved wood into the shape of things and worshiped the things. And they made idols of gold and silver and they worshiped them because they thought there were gods inside that could help them with their lives. Christian and Jewish theologians always point out that Genesis 1 is a great denunciation of these beliefs. Genesis 1 is telling people that the sun, moon, stars, trees and man-made idols are just things - NOT GODS. This is a really important message to get from Genesis 1. If you check out the history of the Israelites, you'll find that it took God quite a long time to get the Israelites to give up worshiping idols.

Now in modern times, we still have people who think like the animists. They believe that drops of water from the pre-biotic soup magically turned into a living cell. For that matter, they believe that drops of water magically turned into human beings! There is no evidence there ever was a pre-biotic soup and no reason to even think that there could even have been one. Even if there was one, the water to life hypothesis is so unlikely it needs to be called impossible. The genetic code and the complex molecules that use it can only be produced by intelligence. (See my essay, The DNA Code.) Atheists typically accuse Christians of believing in magic but it is really the other way around. Christians believe that life and the whole universe have been carefully engineered. It is the atheists who believe in magic because they believe that things that cannot possibly happen, happened anyway.

On a slightly different subject, these days, there are people who work with silicon circuits and computer programs and think the silicon circuits can turn into conscious beings to help people just as ancient people thought an idol made of wood, silver or gold could be conscious and have magical powers that could help them. And so, here in modern times, we have the same irrational thinking coming from people who claim to be modern, rational and scientific. It goes to show how hard it is for people to get rid of their primitive, superstitious nature.

Again, the point of this essay is to show how exactly right Genesis 1 is when it is interpreted from the old Earth creationist approach. If you can find any creation myths from other cultures that manage to get anywhere close to the results in Genesis 1 AND SCIENCE, please let me know. If you can't find a creation myth that comes close to Genesis 1 AND SCIENCE, please explain how "ignorant shepherds in the Middle East" knew so much about the Earth thousands of years before science came along.