Transcript & Slides: Is Genesis Believable?
Is Genesis Believable?
By David Feddes
Genesis is a challenging part of the Bible for many people who find some of its statements hard to believe. Some find it hard to believe that God created the world in six days.
Genesis challenges
- God created the world in six days? Plants without sun? Humans without primate ancestors? People without belly buttons? Plant-eating tigers?
- Ark held ancestors of land animals and birds? Flood covered the earth?
People may say, "How could you have plants without the sun? Plants are created on day three; the sun isn't created until day four. How could that be?" Or they may say, "We know that there have been various kinds of primates that lived, so how could there be humans without any primate ancestors? Did the first people have no belly buttons, if there was no umbilical cord and they were just made from scratch? What about plant-eating tigers? Genesis 1 says that the animals and people were given plants to eat by God, and some animals sure look like they have teeth that are made for tearing at flesh. Were they vegetarians?"
Some of those questions aren't quite as forceful as they might sound the first time they're stated. For one thing, there are various theories of creation that certain Christians hold. Some theories of creation would not even be challenged by questions like this. But even if you are a six-day young earth creationist, these questions aren't really that intimidating. Plants without the sun? Well, if you don't want to look back, look ahead. Look to the new creation. The Bible says the new creation "will not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light and the lamb is its lamp." Do you think that God needs the things he created to produce light? Those are light-bearers and markers of times and seasons. But if God wants light, all he had to do was say, "Let there be light," and there was light before there was ever a sun, moon, stars, or anything.
When you wonder about the plant-eating tigers, the Bible says in the new creation, the wolf will live with the lamb; the cow and the bear will feed together; the infant will play near the hole of the cobra. So you can have these nasty-looking creatures with their tough fangs, and that doesn't mean they have to be eating each other. God—just saying the word "God" changes every possibility. The challenge that many people have is what Jesus said to some of the Sadducees, some of the secularists of his day: "You don't know the Scriptures or the power of God." If you know the Scriptures, and if you know the power of God, then some things are much more possible than you think.
Humans without primate ancestors? If you don't want to believe that about Adam, let's just fast forward to Jesus. Jesus was born of a virgin. Some of the greatest people in biblical history were born of women who were past childbearing age. So we know that somehow or other God did miracles in people for whom the normal biological processes wouldn't have worked. So some of these challenges aren't quite as overwhelming as one might think. Once you say, "God!—in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," then the range of possibilities expands a lot.
Another area of questioning that some people have is: Would any ark be big enough to hold the ancestors of all the land animals and birds that are around today? If you wish, you can look a little bit into the dimensions of the ark and find that it was a rather large vessel and learn about that. If you take an animal in the ark, you don't necessarily have to take a full-grown elephant; you might want to take a smaller one if you're fitting some things in. Anyway, you can do a lot of study on that if you wish.
There are questions like: Could the flood have covered the earth? What would the resulting geology of that look like if we were to study it today? Those are the kinds of challenges that sometimes come up in the reading of Genesis. If you wish to study some of the young-earth creationist views on how those things came about, there are books written about it. If you want to understand how some Christians with different theories of creation would account for their understanding of Genesis, you can read about that.
Those are only some of the Genesis challenges. In my opinion, those are not the ones that make people most resistant to Genesis. This is a whole set of things that you can discuss and explore further. But here are some that are really bothersome.
Genesis challenges
- The Creator is the supreme authority?
- Marriage is lifelong, male-female union?
- Growing population is a blessing?
- Original sin has corrupted all humans?
- Sin brings wrath, judgment and death?
- God upholds climate and seasons?
The Creator is the supreme authority. He made everything. It all comes from him. Everything answers to him. When you have a lot of people with an authority problem, that's not fun.
Marriage is a lifelong male-female union. When you have people who want to live together without marriage as though that's just the way to do it, or when you have people who want to trade out one person for another and get divorced, then the notion of a lifelong union that nobody should separate is not popular. If you happen to be a man attracted to men or a woman attracted to women, and the Bible says marriage is a male-female union, then Genesis is very inconvenient. If you think you're a boy trapped in the body of a girl or a girl trapped in the body of a boy, Genesis is not convenient when it says God made humanity male and female.
When God says, "Be fruitful and multiply," you won't like this if you think the earth is being ruined by having too many humans around. You object, "It's destroying the earth; it's going to be catastrophe!" You ignore that little inconvenient fact that there are 5% as many climate-related deaths as there were 100 years ago. You just buy into this notion that human population is a disaster, and you object to the words, "Be fruitful and multiply." When God speaks those words to Adam and Eve, of course, it's a blessing. When God speaks to Noah and his wife, it's a blessing. You say, "But that's when there were only a few of them, and so it's good that the population was growing then." That's another hangup that people have about Genesis: that humanity is the crown of creation, and more is better.
Original sin has corrupted all humans. Do you think that teaching from Genesis causes people more resistance, or the notion that tigers might have eaten grass? Whatever the tigers were up to, the fall of Adam and Eve was a catastrophe that brought people under the grip of sin and into the claws of Satan, and we need a Savior. People want to say, "I'm good just the way I am. If I was born this way, it must be fine." The notion of original sin and that we might be born polluted and bent in a wrong direction by sin is just not something we want to believe. Sin brings wrath. It brings God's judgment. Sin brings death. God warned, "In the day you eat of it, you shall die," and death came to the whole human race when humanity disobeyed God.
You might want to argue about whether there were six 24-hour days, but I'll guarantee you that a lot more people are more upset at the notion that God could be angry with them because of their sin and wickedness. You read in Genesis that God upholds the climate and the seasons. But we think we know better. We know exactly what's going to happen to earth's climate in 12 years. We know precisely what the climate is going to be in 100 years because we run it. Really? But that's the age we're living in.
I believe that these are where you really find Genesis challenging our mindset and our ways of thinking. Of course, there are other things that scientists talk about, and Christians trying to mesh the Bible with science talk about, but these things I've mentioned are where the rubber is really hitting the road. These are the areas where Genesis can be a major challenge to the way that we think, live, see ourselves, see the world, and see God.
Is Genesis believable?
- What does evidence say about Creator?
- What does Jesus say about Genesis?
- What are attractions of evolutionism?
- What is track record of scientists and Bible teachers and their interactions?
So just ask that question: Is Genesis believable? I want to answer that question by asking four questions, basically, in dealing with this. What does the evidence say about a creator? What does Jesus say about Genesis? Because if Jesus believed Genesis, and you claim to follow Jesus, then you have to pay very careful attention to Genesis. If he believed it, why would people be drawn to preferring the story of evolutionism? I'm not just talking about a biological theorem now of evolution but of evolutionism as a whole mindset. Why would that be preferable to what Genesis says in the minds of many people? What are the attractions of evolutionism that make it more believable to some people than Genesis? And then think a little bit about what's the track record of scientists? What's the track record of Bible teachers? What's the kind of history of their interactions when they're discussing Genesis and related matters?
Evidence of the Creator
- Physical Evidence
- Intelligent design
- Being
- Life
- Stunning wonders
- Daily delights
- Personal evidence
- Thought
- Conscience
- Choice
- Love
- Longing
Well, first of all, what's the evidence for a creator? I don't want to get into this in detail—I've got whole sermons on this—but just to summarize: When you read Genesis, two of the main claims are: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," and "God created man in his own image; male and female he created them." The creation of everything by God and the creation of humanity in God's image are two of the absolute fundamental truths revealed in Genesis 1 and 2. Now, is that believable?
What's the alternative? The alternative is, of course, that a chance, mindless process produced all that is. What's the physical evidence? Well, when you look around here, you find the more we have studied, for instance, DNA and human genetic material, we find that you can take an amount of DNA the size of a pinhead and find in it enough information that, if you put it into books, it would go from the earth to the moon. The stack of books would. Do you believe, back in Darwin's day, they talked about protoplasm surrounded by a membrane? That's what a cell was. Nowadays, when you know about the genetic coding of DNA, it becomes almost impossible to deny some sort of design or genius behind the formation of life.
The fact that there's something instead of nothing—that being even exists—is a major physical indicator that there's a creator behind it all. That there's life instead of just dead material. And if you just have eyes in your head and your ears are working, you see some of the splendors of the stars, you see the mountains, you hear the waterfalls, and there's an almost immediate impression that there is someone of great beauty and wisdom who produced these stunning wonders. When you drink a cup of hot chocolate in the winter or lick an ice cream cone in the summer, it almost is instinctively triggered in you that you're delighting in something, and you say, "I don't know if this is just random molecules interacting." What if the Bible is correct when it says, "He fills your stomach with food and your heart with joy"?
And then, if looking around or observing physical evidence isn't enough, there's that personal evidence: thought—the ability to perceive something about the world you live in and find it to be accurate. That's a staggering thing—that what goes on in here has any relationship to what goes on out there. And the notion that conscience might actually have a sense of what is right and what is wrong. If you do not believe in a creator, then thought and conscience become random firings of electrical impulses in a randomly evolved blob of meat. Your brain is a randomly evolved blob of meat. What's going on in it is electrical impulses doing all that, and everything you think to be true, everything you believe to be right and wrong, is really just all of that stuff going on in there.
You know that's wrong. Okay, I'm not even gonna argue it. You know that's wrong because you can't even think without it. You can't even think. If you think that, one thought destroys all others. Choice, love, longing—all of these things that we know from within to be real—we know they're not just chemistry. Chemistry is fine; study the chemistry of the brain as much as you like, but to reduce everything to chemistry is an enormous mistake. That longing—Ecclesiastes says that he has put eternity in the heart of man. There's a reason that, throughout history, almost everybody until our age at least has been religious, have believed in some sort of hidden and mighty power or another. Because we just can't help it. We were created in his image, and there's something in us that yearns for him. We know that the choices we make, that the loves that we feel, are more than the one story tells us. And the Genesis story makes a lot more sense of that in saying, "Hey, physical reality or what you know on the inside—your personal reality—point to the reality of the creator." And that goes a lot better with the idea that God created the heavens and the earth and made man in his own image than that your brain is a randomly evolved blob of meat.
What does Jesus say?
If Jesus is believable, so is Genesis.
- Jesus said marriage is based on what the Creator did in the beginning.
- Jesus said final judgment will be like judgment in Noah’s day and Lot’s day.
- Jesus connected faith and eternal joy to Abraham’s relationship with Jesus.
Onto a more important question: What does Jesus say? Well, in summary, Jesus says marriage is based on what the creator did at the beginning. He was asked about marriage, and how did he answer? He said, "Well, let's go back to the beginning." Jesus said final judgment would be a lot like judgment in Noah's day and in Lot's day. Noah makes an appearance in Genesis 6 through 9. Lot makes an appearance in later chapters of Genesis and the destruction of Sodom. And Jesus says if you want to know something about final judgment, think back to the flood and think back to the fire that destroyed Sodom.
When Jesus was explaining faith and eternal joy, he talked about Abraham, the lead character in many ways in the book of Genesis. The main character. Jesus was asked about the question of divorce, and Jesus says, "Haven't you read that at the beginning, the creator made them male and female, and said, 'For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore, what God has joined together, let man not separate." People say that Jesus never said a word about homosexuality. What about this? "The creator made them male and female." Jesus said something about the permanence of marriage. Jesus made it very clear that it all went back to the creator.
When Jesus was speaking about the judgment at the end of the world, he says, "Just as it was in the days of Noah, so it will also be in the days of the Son of Man. People were eating, drinking, marrying, and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. It was the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all. It'll be just like this on the day the Son of Man is revealed. Remember Lot's wife." Lot's wife is the one who had been warned not to look back and did, and turned into a pillar of salt.
So you get a pretty clear idea of what Jesus thought of Genesis. He thought it was true. He thought that Genesis told us where male and female and marriage come from. He thought Genesis judgments really happened and that similar judgment would happen again. And he wanted us to remember Lot's wife and remember those who didn't take judgment seriously when it was spoken of in Genesis and make sure that we don't end up in the same boat, where we're going on with business as usual with no regard for Jesus' warnings of judgment and find ourselves falling under judgment.
When Jesus was speaking with some of his opponents, he said, "Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad." And they said, "Are you greater than Abraham?" He says, "I tell you the truth: Before Abraham was born, I am." So Jesus is saying, Father Abraham, the main figure in the book of Genesis, already knew I was coming, and he was glad about it. And by the way, I was actually here before Abraham, though not yet in human form. Jesus said, "Many will come from the east and the west and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven." Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—three dominant figures in the book of Genesis. What do you think Jesus thought about Genesis?
Now, as I've mentioned before, you have people who claim to be red-letter Christians. They want to go by what Jesus is recorded as having said and done in the Bible. In other parts of the Bible, they would prefer to kind of sideline, especially those parts that are less convenient. But that's not so easy to do because how do you sideline the portions of the Bible that Jesus himself obviously believed in?
Is NT believable?
Not if Genesis is not believable.
- Adam (Luke 3:38; Romans 5, 1 Cor 15)
- Eve (2 Cor 11:3; 1 Tim 2:13-14)
- Cain (1 John 3:12; Jude 1:11)
- Abel (Luke 11:51, Hebrews 11:4, 12:24)
- Enoch (Hebrews 11:5; Jude 1:14)
- Paradise, Flood, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Lot, Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob, Joseph
The whole rest of the New Testament—if you read the New Testament—I'm not going to go into detail, but there are some passages that you can look up. It's clear in various strands of the Bible. Jesus spoke of Adam. But also the Book of Luke, Romans, and 1 Corinthians 15 are all talking about parallels between Adam and Christ. Eve's fall into sin is spoken of in the New Testament. The Bible says, "Don't be like Cain, who murdered his brother." Obviously, the apostle John, who wrote that, and the apostle Jude, who also referred to Cain, believed that Cain was a real guy and the first murderer. Abel, the first victim of murder and the righteous man, is referred to. Enoch, who walked with God and then was taken to heaven without ever dying, by the way, is in that chapter of people who lived really long lives. He lived the shortest one. If you say that he only lived 365 years and then was taken without dying, others lived to be over 900. That's another of those Genesis passages that can't be true—except it is.
And then, you read the New Testament, you've got talk of paradise, of the flood of Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Lot, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob, and Joseph. I don't have to go into all that. I'm just saying that if you want to ditch Genesis, you're going to have to ditch an awful lot of the rest of your Bible by the time you're done.
What does Jesus say?
If Jesus is believable, so is Genesis.
- Jesus said marriage is based on what the Creator did in the beginning.
- Jesus said final judgment will be like judgment in Noah’s day and Lot’s day.
- Jesus connected faith and eternal joy to Abraham’s relationship with Jesus.
And you'll have to ditch believing that the Son of God knew what he was talking about. That's a rather serious thing to do if you believe that Jesus is the one through whom all things were made, the one who has supreme authority, who knows the end from the beginning, and who says that marriage is based on the beginning, that the final judgment is going to be like it was in Noah's day and Lot's day, that Abraham is the model of faith and eternal joy and of coming to eat with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of God. If you're going to believe Jesus, then you really can't say, "I think I'll sideline Genesis and take only the parts that are convenient for me."
Is Genesis believable?
- What does evidence say about Creator?
- What does Jesus say about Genesis?
- What are attractions of evolutionism?
- What is track record of scientists and Bible teachers and their interactions?
So, what's the evidence say? Both physical and personal evidence say that the story of a creator makes a lot more sense than the story that your brain is a randomly evolved blob of meat, that something came from nothing, that life came from nonliving material, and that intelligence came from non-intelligence. You know which story makes the most sense. What does Jesus say about Genesis? We've looked at that. Why then is Genesis hard to believe, and developmentalism or evolution a lot easier for many people to believe? Why is that? What are the attractions of evolution and evolutionism?
C.S. Lewis was a theistic evolutionist and a Christian. I'm not going to argue that he was right about theistic evolution. He thought that evolution as a biological theorem might be right, or it might be wrong. And being a university guy who had been an atheist, he really didn't challenge the idea of biological development very much. But he distinguished between that and what he called the great myth. He wrote an essay called Funeral for a Great Myth. And the great myth was evolutionism—the notion that everything just keeps on developing and getting better and better and better. He said, "Popular evolution is a myth. In making it Imagination runs ahead of scientific evidence... If science had not met the imaginative need, science would not have been so popular. But probably every age gets, within certain limits, the science it desires." New theories arise not just from new evidence but from new preferences.
Think about that. What does he mean? Lewis says, in essence, "You know what? If you go back and look at intellectual history, you'll find that the poets and the literary types were writing about evolution before the scientists ever found any evidence for it. The poets liked it before the scientists dug up the evidence for it." Lewis also said, "I'm not saying that they made it up, that they just invented the evidence." He says nature has a lot of stuff out there. Lewis's dad was a lawyer. He said a good lawyer will ask certain questions that identify only the evidence that favors his case. He won't get witnesses to lie. He'll just get them to talk about the stuff he wants them to talk about, and that will support the whole point of the lawyer's investigation or the case he's trying to make.
Developmentalism: Attractions of evolutionism
- Guilt-free: Badness is nobody’s fault and can evolve into goodness.
- Youth: Younger generation is better.
- Sales: New inventions/fashions are always better than old.
- Politics: Change is always good.
Now, why would developmentalism or evolutionism be attractive? Lewis, in Funeral of a Great Myth, brought out a number of reasons. One is that badness is really nobody's fault, and it can evolve into goodness. Okay, that's kind of a good deal. You're not to blame when you're bad. And you know what? You have so much potential that your badness could evolve into something good. And it's really kind of depressing, he says, to be told that the world started out good, had a calamity, and is now much worse than it once was. How much nicer to believe that we've just been on an upward trajectory and it's only going to get better from here.
Another thing Lewis said is, youth always like to be superior to their fathers. The younger generation always likes to be superior to preceding generations. And voila, we are! Lewis's hero, G.K. Chesterton, said that a progressive is somebody who believes that Thursday is better than Wednesday because it happens to be Thursday. What is most recent is always better than what came before. Every generation likes to think that it is smart and those who preceded it are dunces. Think how youth look at clothing styles or hairstyles: "Mom and Dad, you look like such dorks!" When you look back at what you looked like years ago, you might think the same thing. When you look at old pictures, you always think that what we wear now, what we look like now—man, we have finally arrived at good style! Likewise, we think we've finally arrived at good morality. We finally understand.
Another reason, said Lewis, is that developmentalism is economically very good for sales. Sometimes it's true that the newest device is better than the previous generation of that device. And sometimes maybe the fashions look a little better--and sometimes not. But it's very, very helpful for merchandisers and marketers and corporations to say, "Newer is better! I know your clothes still fit, but don't you really need to put them in the closet and get something new?" If you just liked the clothes you had and stuck with them until they wore out, there would be a lot less buying going on. "Madam must always have the latest fashion, "said Lewis. He saw that as being very compatible with the whole mindset of developmentalism and the attractions of evolution. I need the most recent—I've got to be up-to-date!
Sometimes the new gadgets are better, but sometimes not. I just had to buy another washing machine a few months ago. And you know why? Because it has the fancy electronic control board with 87 different settings to do your wash. In the old days, they had about three settings--but many of those machines lasted thirty years. Now you've got 87 settings (although you still only use the three that you used before), and your fancy electronic control board dies within a couple of years. Ah, but we've got the newest, the best, the most fabulous washing machine! You can't even find a new washing machine without one of those control boards that die that after a couple of years. Who could imagine that an electronic board might not be a great idea for a machine that constantly has water slopping around? Anyway, the idea that newer is better helps merchants to sell a lot of stuff.
Lewis pointed out why politicians would like developmentalism, the notion that change is always good. Hope and change—if we just change things, they will get better. If we can just throw out the person who's currently there, then things will get better. Every election cycle has the same little slogan over and over again. Lewis said this has been going on ever since the French Revolution: throw out the old regime, bring in a new one, and life will get better. (In the case of the French Revolution, the result was thousands of people being beheaded, followed by the military dictatorship of Napoleon.)
Lewis said all of those factors together mean that we're in an age that likes this whole mindset of developmentalism, this whole mindset of evolutionism. That mindset has very little to do with biological research. We just like that way of thinking, and therefore, a scientific view that seems to match that makes a lot more sense to us. As Lewis says, "Darwinism gave to a pre-existing myth the scientific reassurances it required. If no evidence for evolution had been forthcoming, it would have been necessary to invent it."
New theories are not the pure product of new evidence. Sometimes new evidence produces new theories, but often new theories arise more from new preferences, from a new intellectual taste. Just be aware of that. I'm not saying that this solves every question between Genesis and scientific research. I am saying, be aware of the age you live in, which is in love with developmentalism. It does not like the idea that there was a creation and then a fall from it. Nor does developmentalism like the idea that, at the end, there is going to be a sudden intervention and interruption from outside of history that brings history to its conclusion and something entirely different.
That does not go well with gradual developmentalism. As the New Testament expresses, people are going to say, "Oh, the world has always been going on the way it's ever been, and this coming of Christ isn't going to happen." There is a hostility in the developmentalist mindset to any kind of outside intervention. Of course, God is the one who runs the world, in whom we all live and move and have our being. So it's actually not, in many ways, an outside intervention when God intervenes, but it's sudden, and it's the Creator coming and taking absolute charge and straightening things out again. All these things do not fit with the kind of thinking that makes us feel comfortable most of the time.
Is Genesis believable?
- What does evidence say about Creator?
- What does Jesus say about Genesis?
- What are attractions of evolutionism?
- What is track record of scientists and Bible teachers and their interactions?
We've seen some of the attractions of evolutionism. The final part I'd like to think about is how scientists and Bible teachers have made certain statements and what's the track record. What's involved in the interactions here?
Does sun orbit earth?
It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other. (Psalm19:6)
He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved. (Psalm 104:5)
The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day. (Joshua 10:13)
What could be clearer than that the sun moves and that the earth is absolutely stationary and stands still? Christians reading those statements in Scripture knew with absolute certainty that the sun moves around the earth. And if you don't believe the Bible, just open your eyes and look out your window in the morning. The sun comes up, and you're not moving—except one time, the sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day. So the sun normally moves, but God did one miraculous exception where the sun didn't move. And so if some rascal like Copernicus comes along and says that the earth goes around the sun, what are Bible teachers to say about that?Martin Luther said, "People give ear to an upstart astrologer who wants to prove that the earth moves, not the heavens, the sun, and the moon. [Luther was sure the heavens, the sun, and the moon revolve around the earth.] "This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy. But Holy Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, not the earth." Absolutely clear and obvious, right?
John Calvin, another great Reformer and church leader, wrote, "We will see some who are so crazy, not only in religion but who in things reveal their monstrous nature that they will say that the sun does not move, and that it is the earth which shifts and turns. When we see such minds, we must confess that the devil possesses them." So you are demon-possessed, you have a monstrous nature, and you are crazy if you think that the earth orbits the sun.
Let's not just focus on Protestants such as Luther and Calvin. They never actually threatened or attacked anyone who agreed with Copernicus. It was the Roman Catholic Inquisition that arrested Galileo and ordered him not to claim that the earth goes around the sun. Cardinal Bellarmine commanded, "Galileo must abandon completely the opinion that the sun stands still at the center of the world and the earth moves, and henceforth not to hold, teach, or defend it in any way whatever, either orally or in writing."
It seemed absolutely clear to some very important and smart Christian thinkers that the Bible teaches that the earth is stationary and the sun moves around it. That alone should maybe make us a little bit cautious when we weigh in on scientific matters, especially when two Psalms are the basis for making that claim. Are the Psalms the inspired Word of God? Absolutely. But they're also the inspired poetry of God. And maybe you shouldn't use poetry to get all of your scientific principles. At any rate, I mention this as part of the Christian track record to induce a little bit of humility and caution.
Scientists’ track record
- Astronomy: Ptolemy, Galileo
- Medicine: bleeding, medicines, organ transplants, gender reassignment
- Technology: cars, smartphones, bombs, pesticides
- Biology: Nebraska Man, Piltdown Man, Moth myth
The scientists also have a track record. And the scientists are the ones who held Ptolemy's view of the universe—the notion that the earth is at the center and that everything else revolves around it. The Ptolemaic system, the system of Ptolemy, was believed for more than 1,500 years. And if you're tempted to say, "What a bunch of knuckleheads! How could you believe that the sun goes around the earth?" Well, you want to know why these knuckleheads believed it? Because it worked with almost 100% accuracy for more than 1,500 years. Before you despise those knuckleheads, they could predict the exact location of nearly every star and every planet in the heavens using that old system. It was not so obvious—although I think it did turn out to be correct—that the earth orbits the sun.
But my point is, the science of everything going around the earth worked with an extremely high degree of accuracy for fifteen centuries until it was found to be mistaken. It was really not the Bible that was being defended, even by the Christians, as much as the science of the day. So astronomy has Galileo and others who discovered things, but let's not forget that Ptolemy's earth centered universe was also the science that was believed for many centuries.
Medicine has a scientific track record. It has the track record that many of us are familiar with, that gives science much of its credibility—the wondrous transplant procedures or medicines that help us heroically to be rescued from certain illnesses. It's also science that killed George Washington, the father of our country, by bleeding him to death because that was the best medical practice of the time. "Bleed him some more! If he's sick, let's take another pint of blood. Let's get another quart. He's sure to get healthy then!" Of course, we would never make mistakes like that now--or would we? It's medicine that does transplants. It's also medicine that mutilates perfectly healthy bodies, cuts off perfectly healthy body parts, pumps in a whole bunch of chemicals, and calls it gender reassignment, and says this is rational.
Science has given us the technology for cars and smartphones. I sometimes tell my kids that without calculus, most of these scientific wonders would not be around. Even so, not everybody loves calculus! But it is high-level mathematics and science which made possible some very amazing things such as the brilliant insights of Einstein--which also led to the atomic bomb. Are deadlier bombs the kind of progress science was hoping for?
Scientific technology produced pesticides, which cut two ways. They get rid of a lot of nasty little critters, but they also can poison the environment and have impacts you didn’t intend. So science has a mixed track record.
And then there’s the matter of biology itself and the research of the history of the earth. I’ll just give a few examples from there. Ever heard of Nebraska man? Well, there were researchers who, in the process of looking for a missing link between humans and primate ancestors, had a whole picture drawn of Nebraska man—exactly what he looked like, complete probably with a club and a few other things, his hairstyle and all of that. So, we "know" what Nebraska man looked like—something halfway between an ape and a human. Nebraska man, despite all those pictures of what his whole body and even his hairstyle and so on looked like, was reconstructed from one tooth! One tooth was used to create a whole species. Eventually it was found that the tooth was not actually the tooth of a human ancestor at all. It was the tooth of a pig that still exists in Paraguay.
Then there was Piltdown Man. On the discovery of Piltdown Man, the New York Times had a heading: "Darwin Theory Proved." For about 50 years, Piltdown Man was exhibit A to prove human evolution, until it was found that Piltdown Man had the skullcap of a human and the jaw of an orangutan. It was a deliberate forgery that nobody had noticed or exposed for 50 years while they were busy writing articles about it. How could that be? Well, as Lewis said, "each age gets, within reason, the kind of science it desires," and many people desired Piltdown Man to be the truth.
Then there was the peppered moth myth. For many years, a prime example in science textbooks of natural selection was what happened with peppered moths during the Industrial Age in England. The lighter versions of the moth were more numerous before the Industrial Age because the trunks of the trees on which they rested were lighter in color. But after the Industrial Age, the tree trunks got darker, and then the average peppered moth turned out to be darker as well, because the predators had a harder time finding them. At least that was the theory. What could be more obvious? Now, even if that were all true, it would not necessarily prove a whole lot about evolution. But here's the real truth: those pictures of peppered moths in textbooks were actually of moths that were pinned to trees or that had been staged after being developed in captivity. Eventually it was found that peppered moths don’t even rest on the trunks of trees—they hang out in the leaves.
So the change in the number of light moths or dark moths had nothing to do with their color, and industrialization had zero to do with it. Yet 50 years after that was known, there were still science textbooks that had the pictures of the peppered moth as an example of evolutionary adaptation to a changing environment. A textbook author was asked, "You know that isn’t true, don’t you? It has no connection with natural selection because they don’t even go on the trunks of trees." And the author said, "Yeah, but it’s very visual." Okay, Santa is visual too. But there is a time to just say, "We were wrong. That example has been debunked. If we want a visual example of our scientific theory, we’ve got to find a different one." These are part of the overall track record of science, which has gotten many things right but also has gotten many things wrong.
Now, just picking on where the Christians got it wrong or where the scientists got it wrong would be incomplete. The Christian scholars often are right about a lot of things. The scientists are right about a lot of things. But we need to approach the whole matter with some confidence that, yes, we can know some things, but also with some humility that we don’t always know as much as we think we know—and much of what we "know" even now is probably wrong.
Confidence & humility
- The Bible is always right in what it teaches. But Scripture is sometimes misunderstood or misapplied.
- Scientific theories are often helpful. But they are sometimes mistaken and always incomplete.
- Bible and science offer two angles.
The Bible is always right in what it teaches, but it’s sometimes misunderstood; it’s sometimes misapplied. You might think it teaches that the sun goes around the earth, as some Christians did. Does it really teach that? It’s not why God gave the Bible in the first place, to settle our scientific theories. Is God trying to address that kind of question at all with some of the statements that are being made? Might we Christians be reaching a little too far to find Bible confirmation for stuff that the Bible is really not intending to show us?
I’ll give another example. People say, "Wow, the Bible was so much in advance of its age because it knew that the earth is circular. It even speaks of "the circle of the earth" (Isaiah 40:22). You might say, "I’m so glad to hear how scientifically up-to-date the Bible is!" But the Bible also speaks of "the four corners of the earth" (Revelation 7:1; 20:8). Do you say, "Oh, I’m glad the Bible is so scientific and reveals that the earth is a square"? Did you ever think that both Bible passages use different poetic language to mean the same thing? That speaking of "the circle of the earth" and "the four corners of the earth" both mean the whole earth? And that the Bible is not speaking literalistically or scientifically when it says these things? When Scripture says "the circle of the earth," God was not trying to tell people, "Hey, a few centuries before anybody discovers the earth is round, I’m giving you that inside information." God is not trying to tell us that the earth is round or that it’s square. Do a little research; you can find out eventually whether it’s round or square. But that’s not what God is telling us in the Bible. He’s not trying to settle that scientific matter for us.
So, the Bible is always right in what it teaches. But don’t make it teach things that it’s not even trying to communicate to you.
Scientific theories are often helpful, but they are sometimes mistaken and always incomplete—even the good theories.
Newton made some tremendous discoveries. He’s the villain who discovered calculus along with Leibniz, so you can hate him for that if calculus has tormented you in college. But Newton also formulated the laws of universal gravitation. Oh, and he wrote more than a million words on theology as well. Newton was a genius who discovered some amazing things about gravity and various natural laws and the equations. Alexander Pope said of Newton, "Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in night; God said, ‘Let there be Newton,’ and all was light." That’s how people viewed Newton—"Let there be Newton, and all was light." He explained so much and helped people to understand so much--and his model turned out to be wrong about how things really work.
It’s still tremendously helpful to know the Newtonian laws, but quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity tell us that actually Newton’s model, though very helpful, was just a model and was mistaken in some key areas. And it’s more complicated than that. In fact, every time you have a great scientific theory, you get to the point where you say, "And it’s more complicated than that." Even when Ptolemy’s theory was tremendous in predicting the movement of the heavenly bodies, you can’t just say it was wrong simply because it happened to think that the earth went around the sun. It was right about an awful lot of stuff, even though one key element of the model was wrong.
That’s just the way science is. If, back in the day, you said, "I reject Ptolemy totally," well, go ahead and reject him, but then you won’t know where the sun is going to be next week or where the various planets and stars are going be in the sky. Ptolemy and his earth-centered model were predicting such things wonderfully well. Science does that—a scientific theory predicts some things wonderfully well, but you don’t quite know if it’s really true. You just know that it kind of works most of the time.
Keeping that in mind, you ought to be a little cautious about saying, "A scientific model of the universe is what I’m going to take to overthrow what the Word of God teaches about the big things: about who God is, about what humanity is, and about what the purposes of the creation are."
We need to approach these things with some confidence and some humility: learn from Bible scholars, learn from scientists, and realize that both can be mistaken, and often are.
In addition, we need to realize that the Bible and science, whether we’re talking about Genesis or the other parts of the Bible, offer two different angles on the same world. And both angles can give us true information.
Creator and processes
- History: The Lord rules over the nations. (Psalm 22:28)
- Botany: He makes grass grow for the cattle, and plants for man to cultivate. (Ps 104:14)
- Embryology: You knit me together in my mother's womb. (Psalm 139:13)
In the Bible, Rehoboam is a king who splits the kingdom of Israel from the kingdom of Judah by his stupid actions. But before he ever did that, God had already prophesied to Solomon that the kingdom would be divided as a punishment on Solomon. And so the Bible is talking about God's declaration that the kingdom is going to be divided as a judgment on Solomon, and then it goes into the details of a rebel named Jeroboam and a knucklehead named Rehoboam and their actions that result in the division of the kingdom. You have the actions of humans that bring about the division of the kingdom, and all along, God is doing it.
Now, historians can be examining things and saying, "Here's what I think the human factors are; here are some of the events that brought it about." And that in no way denies the fact that the Lord rules over the nations. If you're a theologian or a Bible scholar, you shouldn't say historians are wicked for trying to explain history because we know that God rules it. Well, He does rule it, but there's a lot going on at a different level that we can talk about and explain.
The Bible says, "God makes grass grow for the cattle, and plants for man to cultivate" (Psalm 104:14). So if a person comes along and says, "I'm going to study cell biology and plant biology and botany," do you say, "Die, heretic! The Bible says God does it! Don't you dare study how trees are formed or how the sap moves through them because we know God does it. Any other kind of human explanation is evil"?
Or consider embryology. The Bible says, "You knit me together in my mother's womb; I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made." Does that mean that embryologists are evil, anti-Bible people because they study how babies form and develop in the womb in terms of the physical processes?
The fact is that you have two angles. One is saying that all these wonders are because of God, and another angle says, "Here are the processes that are involved." We ought to understand that when we're talking about God's work, we're not just talking about things that have nothing to do with a natural process. There can be a danger for Christians to make God "the God of the gaps" who is active only when something happens that we can't explain in natural terms, or the God of the miracles only. The idea is, "If it happened through a process, then that wasn't God." Oh yes, it was! He is reigning over history even when He's not intervening miraculously. He is making plants grow for people to cultivate, and grass grow for the cattle. He's always making that happen, even if you have explanations at the natural level for what's going on. He forms every baby in its mother's womb, no matter how much you've studied embryology. So don't have a God of the gaps but a God who is supreme and Creator, who is governing everything at all times and sometimes does miracles beyond what we observe in the natural workings of things.
Who runs the weather? The Bible says, "God sends his command to the earth; his word runs swiftly. He spreads the snow like wool and scatters the frost like ashes. He hurls down his hail like pebbles. Who can withstand his icy blast? He sends his word and melts them; he stirs up his breezes, and the waters flow" (Psalm 147:15-18). Now, it's okay to study meteorology. It's okay to study wind patterns. It's okay to study condensation, how rain and hail and snow are formed, and some of the processes that are involved in that. And at the same time, God does it all. It is snow that comes from God, and it is snow that comes from condensation. Both are true. It's not always an either/or.
So that's my point in saying that these things are complementary—that what God says and does and reveals in the Bible is one angle of the truth and the most important angle on the truth. And then the scientific explanation of many processes is telling us how God brings that about in the natural world.
Is Genesis believable?
- What does evidence say about Creator?
- What does Jesus say about Genesis?
- What are attractions of evolutionism?
- What is track record of scientists and Bible teachers and their interactions?
So, is Genesis believable? Well, the evidence is very compatible with "God created the heavens and the earth and made people in His own image." Jesus had those things to say about Genesis: about marriage, about judgments, about faith, and about eternal life rooted in the book of Genesis. We've seen some of the attractions of evolutionism, and we need to be warned—don't just think that because something sounds cool to you and to the age you happen to live in, that that makes it more scientific than anything else. And we need to have some humility, both as scientists and as students of the Bible, when we're trying to figure out how those things fit together.
Where do babies come from?
Genesis is believable. And as I said near the beginning of a previous message: What kind of story is it? There are different views on what kind of story it is and different theories of how to understand that. But I think that it is less like the scientific description of where babies come from, where you get the fallopian tubes, the fertilization, and all the body parts mentioned. It's more like the simplified but profound story parents might tell young children: "Babies come from a mother and a father who love each other and whose love brings about babies." You might add some of the literal details, you might give some figures of speech but it's the basic truth without a ton of scientific detail of how it happens. Genesis is NOT like answering the question "Where do babies comes from?" by saying, "The stork brings them," which is just a myth. It's not a myth to say, "God made the heavens and the earth and made man in His own image."
However, I will give you a story that is a pure myth. When I was looking for a good graphic on where babies come from, I came across this graphic from WikiHow.
Modern myth about where babies come from
The authors were trying to tell readers, "Here's how you explain where babies come from." They gave a few suggestions, and then they gave this graphic that sends the message: "Babies can come from a father and a mother. Babies can come from a father and a father. Babies can come from a mother and a mother." That's a taller tale than the stork myth! I find the stork easier to believe.
Is Genesis believable? Well, is this modern myth believable? This is the story we've come to among people who won't believe what Genesis says about male and female and marriage and about God's creation. You're telling your children the most outlandish and crazy things—that anything can produce a baby. That's not very biblical, of course, and it is not scientific either.
So, let ask one last time: Is Genesis believable? It sure is! And here are some of the basics to believe.
Believe Genesis facts
- The Creator is the supreme authority.
- Marriage is lifelong, male-female union.
- Growing population is a blessing.
- Original sin has corrupted all humans.
- Sin brings wrath, judgment and death.
- God upholds climate and seasons.
That's believable.
Prayer
Thank you, Lord, for Your revelation, including those wonderful first chapters of Genesis. We pray that we may trust You as our great Creator and also obey You as the one who has the right to rule our lives. We pray, Lord, that we may understand again Your structures for humanity, for marriage, for Your blessing of children. We pray, Lord, that You'll also help us to realize the depth of sin revealed in Genesis, the realities of judgment, and the severity of judgment for those who are outside of repentance and Your mercy. Father, turn us again to our Lord Jesus Christ in faith, in sorrow for our sin, in joy at forgiveness, and in anticipation of eternal life. For Jesus' sake, Amen.
Is Genesis Believable?
Slide Contents
By David Feddes
Genesis challenges
- God created the world in six days? Plants without sun? Humans without primate ancestors? People without belly buttons? Plant-eating tigers?
- Ark held ancestors of land animals and birds? Flood covered the earth?
- The Creator is the supreme authority?
- Marriage is lifelong, male-female union?
- Growing population is a blessing?
- Original sin has corrupted all humans?
- Sin brings wrath, judgment and death?
- God upholds climate and seasons?
Is Genesis believable?
- What does evidence say about Creator?
- What does Jesus say about Genesis?
- What are attractions of evolutionism?
- What is track record of scientists and Bible teachers and their interactions?
Evidence of the Creator
- Physical Evidence
- Intelligent design
- Being
- Life
- Stunning wonders
- Daily delights
- Personal evidence
- Thought
- Conscience
- Choice
- Love
- Longing
What does Jesus say?
If Jesus is believable, so is Genesis.
- Jesus said marriage is based on what the Creator did in the beginning.
- Jesus said final judgment will be like judgment in Noah’s day and Lot’s day.
- Jesus connected faith and eternal joy to Abraham’s relationship with Jesus.
Creator of marriage
“At the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate." (Matthew 19:4-6)
The days of Noah
“Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all.” (Luke 17:26-27)
The days of Lot
“It was the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all. It will be just like this on the day the Son of Man is revealed… Remember Lot’s wife!” (Luke 17:28-32)
Abraham’s gladness
“Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad… I tell you the truth, before Abraham was born, I am!” (John 8:56, 58)
“Many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 8:11)
Is NT believable?
Not if Genesis is not believable.
- Adam (Luke 3:38; Romans 5, 1 Cor 15)
- Eve (2 Cor 11:3; 1 Tim 2:13-14)
- Cain (1 John 3:12; Jude 1:11)
- Abel (Luke 11:51, Hebrews 11:4, 12:24)
- Enoch (Hebrews 11:5; Jude 1:14)
- Paradise, Flood, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Lot, Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob, Joseph
What does Jesus say?
If Jesus is believable, so is Genesis.
- Jesus said marriage is based on what the Creator did in the beginning.
- Jesus said final judgment will be like judgment in Noah’s day and Lot’s day.
- Jesus connected faith and eternal joy to Abraham’s relationship with Jesus.
Is Genesis believable?
- What does evidence say about Creator?
- What does Jesus say about Genesis?
- What are attractions of evolutionism?
- What is track record of scientists and Bible teachers and their interactions?
The science we desire
Popular Evolution is a Myth. In making it Imagination runs ahead of scientific evidence… if science had not met the imaginative need, science would not have been so popular. But probably every age gets, within certain limits, the science it desires. (C. S. Lewis)
Developmentalism: Attractions of evolutionism
- Guilt-free: Badness is nobody’s fault and can evolve into goodness.
- Youth: Younger generation is better.
- Sales: New inventions/fashions are always better than old.
- Politics: Change is always good.
Scientific reassurances
Darwinism gave to a pre-existing myth the scientific reassurances it required. If no evidence for evolution had been forthcoming, it would have been necessary to invent it. (C. S. Lewis)
- New theories arise not just from new evidence but from new preferences.
Is Genesis believable?
- What does evidence say about Creator?
- What does Jesus say about Genesis?
- What are attractions of evolutionism?
- What is track record of scientists and Bible teachers and their interactions?
Does sun orbit earth?
It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other. (Psalm19:6)
He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved. (Psalm 104:5)
The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day. (Joshua 10:13)
Luther against Copernicus
People give ear to an upstart astrologer who wants to prove that the earth revolves, not the heavens, the sun and the moon... This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but Holy Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, not the earth.
Calvin against Copernicus
We will see some who are so crazy, not only in religion but who in all things reveal their monstrous nature that they will say that the sun does not move, and that it is the earth which shifts and turns. When we see such minds we must confess that the devil possesses them.
Inquisition against Galileo
Galileo must abandon completely... the opinion that the sun stands still at the center of the world and the earth moves, and henceforth not to hold, teach, or defend it in any way whatever, either orally or in writing.
Scientists’ track record
- Astronomy: Ptolemy, Galileo
- Medicine: bleeding, medicines, organ transplants, gender reassignment
- Technology: cars, smartphones, bombs, pesticides
- Biology: Nebraska Man, Piltdown Man, Moth myth
Confidence & humility
- The Bible is always right in what it teaches. But Scripture is sometimes misunderstood or misapplied.
- Scientific theories are often helpful. But they are sometimes mistaken and always incomplete.
- Bible and science offer two angles.
Creator & processes
- History: The Lord rules over the nations. (Psalm 22:28)
- Botany: He makes grass grow for the cattle, and plants for man to cultivate. (Ps 104:14)
- Embryology: You knit me together in my mother's womb. (Psalm 139:13)
Word and weather
He sends his command to the earth; his word runs swiftly. He spreads the snow like wool and scatters the frost like ashes. He hurls down his hail like pebbles. Who can withstand his icy blast? He sends his word and melts them; he stirs up his breezes, and the waters flow. (Psalm 147:15-18)
Is Genesis believable?
- What does evidence say about Creator?
- What does Jesus say about Genesis?
- What are attractions of evolutionism?
- What is track record of scientists and Bible teachers and their interactions?
Modern myth about where babies come from
Believe Genesis facts
- The Creator is the supreme authority.
- Marriage is lifelong, male-female union.
- Growing population is a blessing.
- Original sin has corrupted all humans.
- Sin brings wrath, judgment and death.
- God upholds climate and seasons.
آخر تعديل: الثلاثاء، 17 ديسمبر 2024، 11:15 ص