What are the arguments against Theistic Evolution? What specific scriptures do you think contradict Theistic Evolution?

Genesis is both the story of the creation of the house and the creation of the home. Exodus 36 through 40 describes the physical creation of the Tabernacle and Exodus 40:34-38 describes the indwelling. 1 Kings 7 and 8 describe the physical creation of the Temple by Solomon. Genesis 1 describes the physical creation of the earth, in a style that is similar to the temple consecration, but it is still a description of the physical creation. There is no either/or dichotomy here. It is both the physical creation followed by the consecration.

I don’t really understand how your timeline maps onto what the verses actually say. The verses actually say you have a watery expanse before the earth. You have the earth before the sun and the moon. You have plants before the sun. You have birds before ‘animals.’ That does not match up with the timeline and it requires so much creativity and artistic license to make it ‘fit,’ it makes me ask, why bother?

I think that these sorts of timelines are interesting, and I enjoyed looking at it, but ultimately, I think that those of us who accept evolution and feel the proper interpretation of Genesis is that it does not contain scientific information, tend to fall into the same trap that our YEC brothers are in. We tend to look and want to find confirmation in the story, when we have already stated that confirmation of scientific knowledge is not there. I have done so frequently, looking at the issues of Cain’s situation of being fearful of living outside Adam’s family as confirming a larger population of humanoids etc. as being confirmation by the scriptures, then having to remind myself it is not, or at least may not be confirmation.

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Think about how the timeline maps onto what an observer would have seen if observing natural history unfold from the surface of the planet. Think about what a vision of the evolution of the planet would look like to an unsophisticated observer being given a vision of the scope of the development of the earth, from the viewpoint of the surface. @jpm

Hello Nick,

I’ve been following this post and I don’t see how the concordance you speak of in Genesis 1 can be thought of as, “accurate” in any way, or even a simplified version of the timeline of origin events, though I myself held your views for most of my Christian life. It seems that in your efforts to harmonize modern science with passages in Genesis 1 that you’ve obfuscated things a little bit and have left other things out. Genesis 1 has the earth as an existing entity on (or before) day 1 with the Spirit of God, “hovering over the waters”. However, you failed to mention that water on earth didn’t appear for 500 million years after the earth had cooled and steam gas condensed and fell to earth, eventually forming a large, shallow ocean. For the sun, we know that it was created before the earth from science and you have the sun, “igniting” per verse three, apparently creating the light in that passage and implying that the sun had already existed and was now lighting up. A clump did ignite in nuclear explosions when it forming in the middle of the solar nebular, but that actually created the sun and that happened before the earth was formed formed, contradicting the sun being, “created” on the fourth day, which is 2/3 the way through the creation acts of Genesis 1. This seems to much more than a simplification of the actual events of creation - it’s a major mistake in the timeline.

Your description of the raqia also is missing details. The, “vault” as described in verses 6-8 is surely describing the atmosphere that was on the earth at the time of the writing of Genesis 1 and God called it the, “sky”, when ancient near-east peoples thought that there was a solid dome holding up the waters of heaven. However, it took 2 billion years for this type of blue-sky atmosphere to develop. The early earth atmosphere came from gases spewed out of volcanoes - mostly hydrogen sulfide, methane, steam and carbon dioxide as far as we know. This was a dense, steamy atmosphere, not like today’s. Water then formed on the surface and at that time methane droplets formed in the air and covered the world in a methane haze. The water collected and in time became oceans and life formed in them, cyanobacteria, which released gaseous oxygen into the atmosphere. This started ~2.7 billion years ago and the oxygen reacted with the methane and eventually cleared out the methane haze and created the blue sky we have now. This was ~2.5 billion years ago. You wrote, “the earth, compressed further, with heavy elements such as iron and radioactive isotopes sinking to the center, and lighter elements such as water and gasses floating out to the exterior.” This describes the, “1st atmosphere”, in earth’s earliest period, dense and steamy, but with no, “vault”. The second atmosphere was the methane haze atmosphere then the blue sky atmosphere some 2.5 billion years ago.

So Genesis 1 has the, “heavens and the earth” created at the beginning and God’s Spirit hovering over the waters, before the 1st day. The 1st day had light created, the 2nd had the raqia (vault) created and God called this, "sky’. The 3rd day God had the water, "gathered to one place, creating, “land” and, “seas”. No sun yet. So the timeline is Earth covered by water, light, sky, then water coalescing creating land then the sun.

From modern science we know that the universe was created at the Big Bang, 9.3 billion years later the sun formed, then the earth, then water then the sky. So some big discrepancies between the timelines of Genesis 1 and modern science.

Genesis 1 also has vegetation created in the 3rd day, the sun and moon in the 4th day, then fish and birds in the 5th day, land creatures in the 6th day and man later in the 6th day.

You wrote, “Science teaches that some of the microbes that evolved stopped getting their energy from the surrounding environment, and instead started getting their energy by consuming other microbes. These microbes further evolved into early animals such as fish, amphibians, and dinosaurs which further evolved into Birds. Coincidence?” I don’t know if one can really harmonize days 3-6 with the evolution since the writer is clearly talking about species that lived on earth when he wrote, which was probably about 4,000 years ago. If you want to go that route, though, basically for biologic complex,multicellular life fish evolved first, then land-based plants, then land-based animals then birds then man. Genesis 1 has plants, fish and birds the same day, land base creatures then man.

So as you can see Genesis contains huge mistakes in the cosmological and biological timelines that I think prohibit it to be considered a condensed version or a simplification of the timeline of creation that we know from modern science. Also, another reason that I don’t like the day-age theory any longer is that the writer clearly makes the case that the days are actual, 24 hour days, since he writes, “there was evening, and there was morning, the [ ] day.” Overall the evidence is pretty clear that Genesis 1 is a theology, and not a scientific lesson.

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I make five assumptions (at least). The first is that if you go outside in a pouring rain at twilight, the sky won’t look much like a dome, until the rain stops, at which time it will appear that the sky has been partitioned by a firmament (try it for yourself, I’ll hold the umbrella). The second assumption is that the earth’s atmosphere was overcast until the Great Oxidation Event and therefore, to an observer on the earth, the sun, moon and stars would not be visible until such an event (this is why it took so long for Galileo to catch on in London, they had never seen the sun). Third is that the 7 “days” described in Genesis 1 are actually 7 separate visions, given by God, to some nameless prophet, each of which emphasized or showed a different part of the development of our planet, and that this prophet then passed this information down in the ancient Hebrew oral tradition until it was written down by Moses. Fourth is that the prophet viewed these visions from the surface of the earth. Fifth is that the prophet had imperfect understanding (like everyone else in the Bible outside the Trinity) of what he saw in these visions and God did not narrate or explain to this prophet what it actually was that the prophet was seeing. Thus we get:

First vision. 4.55 billion years ago - Formation of the Solar System. “void”
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/timeline.html
First vision. 4.55 billion years agoSunlight first reaches the surface of the rotating earth through the thick atmosphere. “Light”
http://www.windows2universe.org/jupiter/atmosphere/J_evolution_4.html

Second Vision. 3.8 billion years ago, it finally stops raining at the end of the Late Heavy Bombardment. “vault” BBC Earth | Home

Third Vision. 3 billion years ago - Formation of the first known continent, Ur. “land”
Third Vision. 2.7 billion years ago the earliest photosynthetic cyanobacteria appear. “plants” BBC Earth | Home

Fourth Vision. 2.4 billion years ago - The Great Oxidation Event: the Earth’s atmosphere gets oxygen. The sun, moon and stars are clearly visible for the first time from the surface of the earth. “lights”

Fifth Vision. 670 million years ago - First animals. 490 million years ago, jawless fish, To 150 million years ago - First birds. “fish and birds”

Sixth Vision. 114 million years ago - First modern mammals. “animals”

Seventh Vision. 5 million years ago - Humans split off from other apes (gorillas and chimpanzees). “male and female he created them”

@Richard_Wright
@Casper_Hesp
@Christy

@Nick_Allen What indication is there in Scripture or comparative lit studies that we should interpret Genesis 1 as someone reporting a vision of the whole of natural history unfolding? That is a huge reach with no textual or cultural justification, as far as I can see.

@Christy Well, we know it is not God’s own exposition on how he created the universe because it is written in third person. If it were God’s direct revelation of how he created the universe then it would say “I hovered over the waters” instead of “. . . the spirit of God hovered over the waters.” Since it isn’t being reported by God, then it must be that it is being reported by someone else. Of course, there was no one else at the time that the first 5 visions were taking place (Gabriel taking notes?) so it must be that the person reporting this information received it, probably in a vision ie. similar to the apostle John in Revelation 4:2 "At once I was in the Spirit. . . " The fact that the subject matter of Genesis 1 is the unfolding of natural history implies that the vision was of the unfolding of natural history. You can say that this is circular logic, but I prefer to call it “reading”. Genesis 1 may very well be a poem, but if so it is a poem in the sense that “The Charge Of The Light Brigade” or “Star Spangled Banner” is a poem, in that it is a poem written about actual events that actually happened.

I just realized that I left out the creation of day and night from that little timeline. I am reposting here an observation made by a friend of mine named Dan Zacharias in an email trail:

Compare the formation of the day/night cycle on the surface of the
waters in Genesis 1:2-5 with Job 26:10 and Proverbs 8:27. This is a
spatial (as well as temporal) representation of day and night on the
earth, as when sunlight shines on a globally shaped water world, it
inscribes a circle on the face of the waters, at the boundary between
day and night. This is supporting evidence for the inspiration of the
Scriptures, for how could the ancients have known this apart from God
Himself? (Assuming they did have an understanding of what they were
writing). This is also scriptural evidence that Genesis 1:2-5 is not
talking about the creation of light, but of sunlight reaching the
earth’s surface through the formerly opaque atmosphere, creating both
day and night. (Why else would God call the day “Light” and the darkness
“Night”?

http://sci.gallaudet.edu/daylight.html

@Nick_Allen

Isn’t this a bit of a self-serving reach?

You are claiming that the Ancients had an UNUSUALLY vivid awareness of the spherical nature of the Earth … and yet they don’t have any sense at all that the Earth is whirling around the sun. If this is case for divine inspiration of the scribes by God… someone must have hung up the phone too early … because there an awful lot of revelations that the ancient world COULD have benefited from … but just didn’t have/know.

This seems like a classic case of cherry picking…

@gbrooks9 I am claiming that the ancients often did not fully understand their own divinely inspired writings. This is not far fetched because I am going to sit in a room full of people this evening who also do not fully understand the inspired scriptures. Come to think of it, no one fully understands the inspired scriptures. Also, I do agree that for the most part, the commonly accepted cosmology of the ancient Semitic people was not scientifically correct. This is not a barrel full of pits from which to pluck a cherry, this is just the result of seeing the world as through a glass darkly.

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Nick,

A number of observations.

A major problem for concordances in general is that they try to, like yours, attribute passages in Genesis 1 as describing events throughout the earth’s history and going back billions of years when they are obviously describing things that existed at the time of it’s writing some 4,000 years ago.

Firstly, Genesis 1:2 cannot reasonably be considered to be describing the creating of our solar system. It’s describing an already created earth covered by water. Again, water didn’t start forming on the earth until 500 million years after its formation. You attribute the verse to the solar system formation by the use of the Ancient Hebrew word, “wabohu” (formless, void). But this is describing the early earth’s empty surface.

You wrote, “sunlight first reaches the surface of the rotating earth through the thick atmosphere.” We don’t know if that is true or not, but even if it were, there was no sun yet (4th day). So your first, “vision” corresponds neither to science or Genesis 1.

Your vision of the, “vault” also is problematic. For one you changed the time of it’s, “creation” by having it in early earth (no surface water) in your previous statements and in the 2nd Atmosphere, 3.8 billion years ago, in your vision post. There is water on the surface but only steam in that atmosphere, not rising up at the top layer but throughout the 2nd Atmosphere mixed with various other gases. Therefore there is nothing to separate. Beyond that, as I said before God called this vault the, “sky” and that is clearly the one of the Third Atmosphere, 2.5 billion years ago. The writer also held the ancient view that the vault held up the waters of heaven. In that case how can we even try to tie it to actual events that were given in a, “vision”?

Your third vision has a major issue. I’ll grant that land masses may have appeared at 3 bya per recent evidence, but cyanobacteria are not plants and the plants from Genesis 1’s day 3 are plants on land, which came in a much later.

You have vision (day) four stating that the 3rd atmosphere let light be visible for the first time creating the lights that are the sun and moon. However, you already have sunlight reaching the surface of the earth in vision (day) one.

It’s true that fish did evolve first, but birds came later.

Animals did come before man. However, they came before birds as well.

So, not only does the timeline in your visions contradict what we know from modern science, they contradict, in some instances, what you had posted previously.

Instead of eisegesis (reading what we want into biblical texts), which creates strained and complicated interpretations, exegesis (proper interpretation) will produce a simpler answer. It’s just simpler and IMO makes more sense that Genesis 1 is about God creating and ordering then about scientific explanations.

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@Richard_Wright
Richard,

My more recent posts may contradict earlier posts, but this is a work in progress, so take the whole thing with a grain of salt. Your assertion that the formless void describes the earth’s early watery surface is interesting. One difficulty with matching up the early chapters of Genesis with natural history, is that the scientific consensus (if there is one) as to the earliest natural history is a moving target. For instance, if we assume that the early earth was dry and water was deposited later by comets and asteroid impacts, then we can create one concordance and pat ourselves on the back until we read the following articles that dispute that the hadean earth was dry.

http://paleobiology.si.edu/geotime/main/htmlversion/archean2.html
So, that is a problem if you decide that early Genesis is concordant with scientific consensus A, B and C and then you wait 30 years and the college textbooks change to D, E and F.

So, for the sake of argument, let’s think about Genesis 1 as if it were visions or dreams being reported by a recipient of these dream/visions. From a viewpoint of 6 feet in height, the horizon is 3 miles in every direction. In order for our prophet to report to us that the Spirit of God hovered over a formless void, we require a circular area of liquid water 6 miles in diameter. In order for our prophet to report that the waters above and below to not yet be separated, we require for it to be raining. In order for our prophet to report that light became visible, although no sun and moon were visible, we require the voice of God and for it to be overcast at dawn.

The only thing that we require for our prophet to report to us that the waters below were separated from the waters above is for it to be foggy/raining, the voice of God and then for it stop raining/fog to lift. True our prophet thought that he was seeing a vault which held up the waters of heaven when he looked up at the overcast sky, and that he probably had this preconception (just like everyone he knew) before he was presented with this dream/vision. Apparently God did not disabuse him of this notion.

Thanks for granting the land masses. The plants are a bit more problematic. While it is true that cyanobacteria are not plants, it appears that photosynthesis developed first in cyanobacteria and then was passed to algae and on to plants. Evolution of photorespiration from cyanobacteria to land plants, considering protein phylogenies and acquisition of carbon concentrating mechanisms - PubMed This means that in order for our prophet to report he creation of plants to us, we require the voice of God, and that observed a sweep spanning from single celled bacteria with no nuclei all the way to seed bearing trees. This at first glance appears to pose a problem in that the evolution of plants overlaps with fish, birds and animals. This is resolved simply by the visions being differentiated by subject matter. Today’s nature program is on the subject of “plants”.

Note that we are not talking about when the sun, moon and stars came into being, but instead we are talking about when they became visible to our prophet. Our prophet is reporting what he sees, so it is what he sees that is important. The only thing that we require from our prophet on day 4 to report the creation of the sun, moon and stars is the voice of God and that the clouds part. On day 1, it was overcast, and light was visible although the source of light was not.

Fish evolved first, and then dinosaurs which evolved into birds.

I make the assumption that day 5’s nature episode is on the subject of livestock type animals and mammals in general.

Then, God made a bunch of people (not just two, although that came later).

So, somewhere it was dark and raining and there was at least 6 square miles of liquid water at some time in the past, and the sun came up. Then there was an overcast day when it was raining, and it stopped raining that day. Then there was an overcast day when a rock stuck up out of an ocean. Then there was a day when it was overcast until the clouds parted. Then there was a day when plants started to evolve. Later on, there was a different day when fish started to evolve, and thereafter birds evolved from dinosaurs. Then after that, on a different day, large mammals evolved. Then people evolved. And, did I mention that God made it happen? Did I also mention that a man with no knowledge of science watched portions of God causing all of this and then tried to explain it to all of his friends, who also had no knowledge of science whatsoever? And yes, within the retelling of the story there is embedded meaning about the relationship between God, the world and mankind.

Here’s mine in a nutshell, Nick: the TE position is a logical fallacy. A purposeless process can not produce an intended result. Under the current model, the source of variation is genetic mistakes. Scripture is very clear and very consistent (not merely in Genesis 1, but from Genesis to Revelation) that one of the essential truths about God is that He Created life and in particular man, and that He did so intentionally. Rather than show you the Scriptures, I am going to encourage you to perform a concordance search on the words “formed,” “Created,” and “made.” I could throw in others as well. I will refer you to Isaiah 43-45. You simply cannot read these three chapters and come away thinking anything other than this: God is Who He says He is and He backs this up by telling us that He intentionally Created the earth to be inhabited by us (45:12 and 18). Indeed, in these three short chapters, there are no fewer than a dozen citations of God’s deliberate Creation of man.

A purposeless process cannot produce an intended result.

@deliberateresult. the ‘t’ in TE stands for “theistic” so there is nothing purposeless about TE.

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That’s great Nick. Please help me understand your position a little bit better. Where exactly do you see the purpose fitting in? The reason I ask is because the source of variation under the current paradigm is indeed devoid of purpose.

Proverbs 16:33 The lot is cast into the lap, But its every decision is from the LORD.

To a scientist every throw of the dice is completely random. To me every throw has been determined by God. Gene changes would be the same. Just because someone who denies the supernatural says a process is devoid of purpose does not make it so. I believe evolution does show the purpose of God.

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@deliberateresult @Bill_II I agree with Bill. It is impossible to disprove the influence of an omnipotent God on the outcome of a seemingly random sequence. For instance, if you flip a coin 50 times, you will find that it is impossible for you to disprove the influence of God on the outcome of the coin flips. Same with genetic selection in a population.

Notice that this defeats the straw man of “The God Of The Gaps”. Even if scientists were to someday create a Theory Of Everything and fill in all of the gaps in biology and reconcile General Relativity with Quantum Mechanics, you still would be unable to test for or disprove God’s influence on the universe.

The paradigm of TE is that the purpose in the universe comes from God’s plan.

@deliberateresult,

Whenever someone wants to discuss either PURPOSE or RANDOMNESS … you HAVE to consider three different kinds of randomness or purpose:

  1. Dice represent RANDOMNESS to humans… but paradoxically, most people think DICE do not freewill, nor do they think dice behave like sub-atomic particles.

  2. A peg board can be designed to direct a steel marble to ONE SPECIFIC hole in the board. OR … a peg board can be designed so that the movement of a dozen steel marbles can still be quite chaotic, but it’s impossible to know which steel marble is going to go where.

  3. The apparatus could be for steel marbles… or it could be sized to shape the behavior of neutrons… but if God knows everything that is going to happen depending on how he sets things up … then he is DIRECTING how things happen if he makes SPECIFIC arrangements for each outcome.

Randomness from the Human viewpoint is not the same thing as purposelessness from God’s viewpoint.

Here is a textual support for the creation of Eden being the local creation of a Garden, and for the creation of Eden not being the creation of life on earth on the 6th “day” of creation. Genesis 2:4 states that

4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.

Most people think that this is the preface to the account of Adam and Eve. However when we look at the Last verse of Leviticus it states:

34 These are the commands the Lord gave Moses at Mount Sinai for the Israelites.

Similarly, the Last verse of Numbers is:

13 These are the commands and regulations the Lord gave through Moses to the Israelites on the plains of Moab by the Jordan across from Jericho.

The final verses in Leviticus and Numbers wrap up those respective books. In the same way, we can plainly see that Genesis 2:4 is not the preface to the account of Eden, but rather Genesis 2:4 is the wrap-up or summary of Genesis 1:1 through Genesis 2:3 and echos Genesis 2:1. Genesis 2:4 refers back to the earlier chapters in Genesis, not forward to the later account of the Garden in Eden.

Therefore Eden is local, not global. The fact that the creation of Eden is a local special creation by God neatly explains why the creation order in Eden is different from the creation order in Genesis 1. Eden being local then implies that the Hebrew word “eretz” should be translated as “land” and not as “world” in the Eden account. That then sets the stage for translating eretz as land in the Noah flood account as well and helps with consistency when showing that the flood was local.