God versus Evolution

Genesis is generally referred to as being defined as "beginning", "beginnings" or more rarely "coming into being".

And right in the first verse of the first book, both chronologically and in location within the collection of books known collectively as "the Bible" it makes an explicit, controversial claim.

"In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth."

The first couple of chapters present the Creation twice; first a broad overview, then a retelling highlighting the key event.

These chapters are at the heart of why the debate over phrases such as "evolution", "intelligent design", "theistic evolution" exists, should exist, and must exist.

I would reference II Timothy 3:16 for one reason; when it says "ALL Scripture is inspired by God" it comes from the Greek word Theopneustos" which literally means God-breathed.

Genesis being part of Holy Scripture*, if the account of how the world was created is false, then all of Scripture can safely be discarded and, indeed, per its own claims, SHOULD be discarded. (I Corinthians 15:19)

Thus the truth or falsehood of the claim that God created the heavens and the earth, and did so in the manner prescribed, is fundamental to accepting or rejecting the other words found within the Holy Writ.

Of course, there is a major problem with the issue. Specifically, if the Bible is accurate, then there were three beings present at creation; God, the Spirit of God (verses 1-3) and the one who would later be known as Jesus (John 1:1).

The nature of these three as three separate yet one is an issue unresolved by man for centuries and unlikely to be resolved prior to judgment when God may choose to reveal this mystery.

Be that as it may, there were no human witnesses until Adam and subsequently Eve were created.

The same, of course, holds true for the other major hypothesis of how the earth came into being, that is evolution. The idea that life started 'somehow" and through a variety of mutations became other sorts of life eventually resulting in humans is a brief description that hardly gets into the depths of the hypothesis...

Then again, it is all but impossible to describe accurately what evolutionary hypothesis is since it is in a constant state of flux. Earth age fluctuates wildly, with 4.55 billion years or so being one common number, another being a few hundred million years either way from about 13.7 billion years.

This is an important distinction since the widely differing quantities of time result in very different ideas of when, how, and through what steps the process was accomplished.

It is not out of a desire to be unfair to one point of view that I cannot formulate the latest idea; it is because there is no general consensus on how it happened, simply an oft-cited "widely held view" that it did.

So what we have are two different ideas of where the world came from which result in two very different views of the meaning of life.

Of course, saying two views is a broad oversimplification of the situation. Even within those who claim to believe in God there are shades of grey in how they interpret Genesis.

Theistic evolutionists, terrified of appearing the fool, hedge their bets by calling the very book they claim to believe a liar, positing millions of years between each "day" of Creation.

One reason for this is the very idea that the earth is several billions of years old.

There is indeed one passage in Genesis that presents the possibility of a great deal of time passing, depending on your reading of verses one and two.

"In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3 And God said, Let there be light; and there was light."
And by the end of verse 5, it explicitly states, "And the evening and the morning were the first day."

It can certainly be one possible understanding of this that time did not begin for a period of...well, for lack of a better word, time for years, centuries, millenniums, or even epochs before God created light.

Chapter 2, verse one thru three seem to indicate otherwise, seeming to quite clearly state the work was accomplished within 7 days.

This is troubling for people who take at face value the idea that the earth is billions of years old.

I find it troubling that people are troubled by this.

If indeed there is a God of such power, vision, and will that could and did create the heavens, earth, and everything living within the earth, then certainly He has the power to create it with all the attributes of an earth of great age; mineral deposits for the use of people could be created, for example.

At the same time, whether there was a period of time between verse 2 and 3 of chapter one or not, the Bible unequivocally makes a claim that tears apart the root of evolution.

"...And the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind...", "...And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind..." (verses 11-12), "And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and God saw that it was good." (25)

So a couple of very important points here.

1) Each thing listed produced "after his kind". Change between species...a fish becoming a bird, a monkey becoming a man, a tree becoming a fish...these controvert the "God-breathed" scripture. One or the other can be true...but not both.

2) If God created imperfect, unfinished beings, he would not have then declared it to be good, nor rested from the"work which He had made" since it was unfinished.

There is one other very important point to make from the Scriptural account of the beginning of life. It is a very unpopular point with people, but if there is a God, His statement supersedes the desires of "enlightened" people.

Animals were created after their kind. Plants were created after their kind.

Man is created in the image of God (vs. 26-27).

Man is created in a different manner. He is explicitly given dominion over animals. This is not to advocate animal cruelty, but it is an indictment of the "animal rights" movement which puts animals on the level of humanity.

They are not. They are not designed to be equal, to have equal importance or equal roles.

There is one further dispute Genesis has with evolution. Skip ahead a few chapters to chapter 7, when the flood occurs. Inside the ark are 2 of unclean and 7 of clean animals, Noah and his family. Outside the ark is complete, utter destruction. "All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died."


Polystrate fossils, inverted strata, the results of the Mt. St. Helens eruption, and other evidences certainly point to the probability that a catastrophic event of a worldwide nature took place.

Those of us who accept the Scripture, where it speaks to history, to be accurate, thus believe those evidences most likely stem from the flood related in these passages.

Since there are genealogies from Adam and Eve and then, other genealogies begun stemming from Noah and his sons, Ham, Shem, and Japheth, it rapidly becomes quite clear that evolution and the Bible are quite incompatible.

If one is true then the other is false. And vice versa.

It is an important debate. If the Biblical account is true then the rules God set forth apply whether we like them or not.

Conversely, if the Biblical account is false then we are free from the moral strictures found therein and able to generate morality based on our own thoughts and wishes.

Suddenly Hitler is evil only to people who disagree with him. Manson should be considered a hero.

The person who declares any other person wrong or evil without adding the phrase "in my opinion" has indicted them self with the deepest shrouds of hypocrisy since right and wrong have no foundation, being merely the result of personal opinion, perhaps influenced by the prevailing wisdom of the day.

Clearly I find it of utmost import to research the truth or falsehood both of Creationism and evolution.

I have spent several weeks doing that once again...it is a practice of mine to research the most recent developments.

Oddly, in Creationism, the most recent developments are repeatedly two-fold:
1) people giving up their faith and trying to harmonize their compromised religious views with the latest bright lights of evolutions
2) people realizing the incompatibility of Scripture with monkeys turning into humans and returning to the Scriptural view.

In proponents of evolution, it is a constant moving target as new research proves the last "next great idea" was fatally flawed.

So they replace it with the theme "there are so many proofs of evolution that we do not need to show any, but we will show why the evidence for the opposing side does not mean what it says."

Ultimately, belief in Creation or belief in evolution puts a person clearly, irrefutably on one side or the other; belief in Scripture or lack thereof.

Those who believe in Scripture would be well served to spend more time following it.

Those who don't...well, it already does not affect them, so they should be really, really sure. The cost if wrong is high.



* The books considered part of Holy Scripture is a fascinating and deep study far too involved for the scope of this piece. For clarity, I consider only Genesis to Malachi and Matthew to Revelation to comprise completely and entirely the true Scriptural canon; 66 books gathered into one.