Verses 20-23: Then God said, "Let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures, and let winged creatures fly above the earth across the face of the firmament of the heavens." And God created great reptiles (in the original Hebrew, the big ta’ni’neem) and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their kind, and every winged animal according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let winged animals multiply on the earth." And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.

Once earth’s atmosphere was ready, strange new creatures appeared quite quickly in the water, and later ventured into the air, and still later onto the land. Scientists call this sudden appearance of animals the “Cambrian Explosion,” or the “Big Bang” of animal life. These first animals were models for of all the animals to come after them. If you saw these strange creatures, you might think they were aliens from another planet, but they were earth’s first animals.

In His wisdom, God gave these animals the ability to change with their surroundings. Though some changed into new forms, such as fish, insects and dinosaurs, they retained their original models. The scientific name for a general model is phylum.

Note that in the entire Creation chapter there is only one animal that has an adjective of size, the “great reptiles.” And in the fossil record, the largest of animals just happens to be the dinosaurs, which were reptiles. Again the wisdom of the Bible is matched by the recent discoveries of science. Whether the big ta’ni’neem actually refers to dinosaurs is not certain. But it is intriguing that the one animal the Bible tells us was big is the reptile, and fossils agree. The meaning of ta’ni’neem as reptile is learned from a comparison of the Hebrew words for snake and reptile as they are used in The Book of Exodus chapters four and seven. Those are the chapters in which Moses is told by God to confront Pharaoh and have his shepherd’s staff first turn into a snake (na’hash in Hebrew), chapter four,  and then into a reptile (ta’ni’neem) chapter seven.

For generations a debate has centered on whether all living creatures were created complete within a few days’ time, or whether they evolved gradually over long periods of time. The fossil record and the Bible suggest that neither view is entirely correct. There is, again, no contradiction between Torah and Teva, only between inaccurate interpretations of the evidence and the text.

At least three events throughout the history of life defy scientific explanation, about which evolutionists can only speculate. These events in the history of life  point to direct action by the Creator, rather than being caused by His natural laws alone.

1) The appearance of the first life, microscopic single-celled organisms soon after the earth’s crust hardened (the oldest evidence of life dates to about 3.6 to 3.8 billion years ago, found in ancient rocks in Greenland). From the first evidence of liquid water on the earth, also some 3.8 billion years ago, to the advent of life there was not enough time for life to have arisen by chance from non-living chemicals (if, indeed, this is even possible given infinite time).

2) The relatively sudden appearance of complex animal life, called the “Cambrian Explosion,” about 530 million years ago. The fossil record shows single-celled organisms before the Cambrian, and then with essentially no hint in the underlying fossils, all the body plans, or phyla, that exist today appear at the Cambrian, with no complex ancestors from which to evolve. Two problems make gradual evolution from single cells to these complex life forms very unlikely: the absence of transitional forms and inadequate time for evolution by mutation and natural selection to occur. The late paleontologist, Harvard Professor Stephan J.Gould, an avid agnostic, wrote that this is one of the great trade secrets of paleontologists. The fossil record does not confirm the gradualism of Darwinian evolution. Niles Eldredge, former curator at the American Museum of Natural history in New York City, the gold standard of naturalism, wrote “The pattern we were told to find in the fossil record does not exist.” Unfortunately, its non-existence has not hampered school text books from teaching that it does exist.

3) The appearance of consciousness, language and complex thought in humans.

Once a person examines the evidence, they must then decide if the mind-boggling complexities of life, the universe, and natural laws (including adaptive evolution) came about by blind natural forces, or were creative processes overseen and guided in wisdom by the Source of all life, God. Since science cannot definitively prove whether God exists or does not exist, and there is no evidence showing a transition from non-living matter (rocks and water and few simple chemicals) to life, either decision comes down to a matter of personal decision and faith.

Perhaps it is time to move past the cliches of the creationist vs. evolutionist debate. The real conflict is between materialist/naturalistic evolution, which attributes remarkable changes to earthbound explanations alone, and a theistic view, which sees in the history of evolution a remarkably intelligent and purposeful progression from simple to complex, from erev to boker. For some, the major obstacle is the matter of time–6,000 years vs. millions of years–but we will approach this topic later. Time need not be a sticking point.

The late British writer and Journalist G.K. Chesterton said:

It is really far more logical to start by saying… ‘In the beginning some unthinkable power began some unthinkable process. For God is by its nature a name of mystery... But this notion of something smooth and slow, like the ascent of a slope, is a great part of the illusion. It is an illogicality as well as an illusion; for slowness has really nothing to do with the question. An event is not any more intrinsically intelligible or unintelligible because of the pace at which it moves. For a man who does not believe in a miracle, a slow miracle would be just as [unbelievable] as a swift one…. There runs though all… history this curious and confused idea that difficulty is avoided, or even mystery eliminated, by dwelling on mere delay... The question here is the false atmosphere of facility and ease given by the mere suggestion of going slow.

These are insightful words, and ahead of their time, considering that they were written in 1925. Even if the Creation occurred over billions of years from our perspective looking back (which actually does equal six days from a perspective looking forward, as we will see), a miracle is a miracle, no matter how much time it takes!

Clarifying translation: God said, “Let the waters teem with living creatures [Hebrew  nefesh hi’yah], and winged creatures [The Hebrew word here is oaf which means in biblical Hebrew any animal with wings as we learn from its use in the Books of Exodus and Leviticus (Exodus 7:14; Leviticus 11:20)] that fly about over the earth across the expanse of heavens.” [At this stage in the development of life on earth, the winged creatures would be flying, insect-like animals. This matches exactly the fossil record. Once again the wisdom of the ancient Bible is matched by the modern discoveries of science.] And God created the great reptiles [The Hebrew word is ta’ni’neem. This word appears later in the Book of Exodus (Exodus 4:3; 7:10, 15) where by comparing its use there we see that ta’ni’neem means reptiles] and every living being that creeps, with which the waters teemed after their kinds; and all winged creatures of every kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the seas; and the winged creatures shall increase on the earth. And there was evening [Erev: chaos] and there was morning [Boker: order, clarity], a fifth day. Again a climb in the level of order of life on earth, erev giving way to boker.

More than 100,000 copies of Dr. Gerald Schroeder's book, The Science of God, have sold since its publication in 1998. It's been published in seven other languages.

Day 1

Verse 1-5: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters. Then God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, day one.

Day 2

Verses 6-8: Then God said, "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters." Thus God made the firmament, and divided the waters that were under the firmament from the waters that were above the firmament; and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.

Day 3

Verses 9-13: Then God said, "Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear"; and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth"; and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning a third day.

Day 4

Verses 14-19: Then God said, "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years; and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth"; and it was so. Then God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also. God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.

Day 5

Verses 20-23: Then God said, "Let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures, and let winged creatures fly above the earth across the face of the firmament of the heavens." And God created great reptiles (in the original Hebrew, the big ta’ni’neem) and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their kind, and every winged animal according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let winged animals multiply on the earth." And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.

Day 6

Verses 24-25 Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind: cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth, each according to its kind"; and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth according to its kind, cattle according to its kind, and everything that creeps on the earth according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

Schroeder's Genesis Project and findings of Cal Tech Professor Joseph Kirschvink's both cite emergence of origin of life on earth at 3.8 billion years ago.

A summary overview of the events of the six 24 hour days of Genesis

Several weeks ago I presented an essay, the Age of the Universe, describing the six days of Genesis chapter one, the creation chapter of the Bible, as six 24 hour days, literally 24 hours in every sense while simultaneously being 14 billion years. This two fold scientific reality stems from the Biblical view of those six evocative days being from a time just after the creation of the universe (Genesis 1:1) looking forward to the creation of the soul of Adam (Genesis 1:27). At tts we termed those six days ‘Genesis time.’ The 14 billion year history we calculate originates with our human view of the identical events of those 6 days, but as seen from the vantage of the earth, looking back into history, from Adam to a time near the beginning of time. Both ages, six 24 hour days and 14 billion years are true and simultaneous. That is the mind-boggling nature of time in this magnificent universe created by God. As scientific data accumulate, this two-fold perception of one series of events gains further verification.

With Genesis Day three, we come to data only recently published by Professor Joseph Kirschvink of the California Institute of Technology. (With my technical background stemming from M.I.T., I am pleased to bring data from that prestigious university on other coast of the United States). There he cites the origin of life on earth as 3.8 billion years ago, an exact match for the 3rd Biblical day where we are told that life starts on the formerly sterile earth. During the period embraced by Biblical day 3, Prof Kirschvink relates that levels of methane gas, the most damaging of the ‘greenhouse gases,’ increased rapidly in the earth’s atmosphere. This would have produced an overcast translucent greenhouse atmosphere that only cleared with the rise of oxygen and the consumption of methane by the advancing forms of life. According to Kirschvink, this is exactly what occurred toward the end of day three and hence on Genesis Day four, the heavens are described as being so clear that the sun and moon and stars were clearly visible. The timing of the transition from Day 3 to Day 4 is intriguing. It matches the transition of prokaryotic microbes to eukaryotic life.

The timing of the start of Genesis Day five is marked by a further sharp rise in the oxygen content of the atmosphere, according to Prof Kirschvink. The increased level of oxygen would have allowed, for the first time, macroscopic multicellular animals to exist. This coincides exactly with the Biblical appearance of the first animals.

At 250 million years ago, the start of Genesis Day six, the mega-continent, Pangaea, formed. The planet earth experienced a trauma of uncertain origin that resulted in decimation of the biosphere. Approximately 90% of life disappeared from the fossil record at this time. The land was then repopulated and by 170 million years ago, Pangaea had broken, resulting in individual continents, shaped very much as they exist today, although not in their current locations.

This brief summary of the concordance between the Biblical and the scientific histories of our world may be seen as an interesting quirk of chance or as the ancient Divine revelation of what would eventually be discovered. The choice we always have is to view the world as the result of a godless set of random reactions or as the making of a Divinely guided teleology. As scientific knowledge accumulates, the window of choice skews strongly toward the latter option.

Gerald Schroeder

A warning from St. Augustine

Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on the facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?

St. Augustine, A.D. 415

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