Seven Day Creation, More

This week's Question of the Week is about the Bible's account of a seven-day creation.

For further information on the Creation and Science vs. Evolution debate, I offer the following highlights from a section of the Biblical History and Culture course I occasionally teach to elementary home school students.

If I could choose a single biblical point to show Scripture's irreconcilable conflict with evolution, it is the emphatic assertion (recorded in both Old and New Testaments) that death did not exist anywhere in creation until after humans sinned. Evolution demands that life evolved from billions of years of death before man and sin existed.

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CREATION VS. EVOLUTION

WORKING DEFINITIONS:

SCIENCE = ("what is"—facts)
can be proven by observing and experimenting with
structure and behavior of the physical and natural world
(examples are biology, chemistry, astronomy)

HISTORY ("what was"—facts)
a record of past events
passed on by people who observed them,
or as shown by other physical evidence
(examples are artifacts, archeology, preserved records)

GEOLOGY
science of the earth’s structure and substance,
which is also a record of our planet’s history.

THEORY = AN IDEA (opinion)
looks at science and history and offers
an uncertain explanation for missing details
(if it’s proven by facts, it’s not a theory anymore)


WHY NOAH’S FLOOD IS IMPORTANT
TO UNDERSTAND GEOLOGICAL FACTS:

The Bible and collected evidence explain geology
by the catastrophic disturbance of the global flood
+ erosion, deposition, fossilization
("a short time and a lot of water")

Evolution says geology is a slow process
of erosion, deposition, fossilization
+ occasional local catastrophes
("a long time and a little water")

Berlingame Canyon and Mount St. Helens
are two examples of major geological formations
observed to take shape in a matter of days
and of the unreliability in rock dating methods


SOME CONFLICTS OF EVOLUTION
WITH THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE:

BIBLE VS. EVOLUTION
• Bible says all kinds of life came before any death (not death before some kinds of life)
• Bible says creation began with God’s spoken Word (not "Big Bang")
• Bible says creation took six days (not billions of years)
• Bible says the earth is about six thousand (6,000) years old
• Bible says perfection became disorder (not disorder became order)
• Bible gives a seven-day week not present in Astronomy
• Bible says man has knowledge of good and evil from the Creator

SCIENCE VS. EVOLUTION
• Science cannot explain the origin of non-biological matter
• Science shows life comes only from existing life; life cannot emerge from a sterile environment under any condition
• Science does not see life cells gain new information leading to more complex life forms (1)
• Science cannot find links necessary for evolution
• Science shows interdependent biological systems could have neither evolved independently, nor reasonably evolved in tandem
• Science measures changes which could not take billions of years (2)
• Science shows not all planets rotate in the same direction (3)

(1) Science only observes mutant life forms produced by dysfunctional cells with either defective or missing information
(2) Numerous measurable processes (earth’s magnetic field decay, ocean salt and sediment accumulation, gravitational collapse of the sun, continent erosion, and atmospheric helium accumulation from radioactive decay are a few examples) are either far too slow or too fast to have possibly occurred for millions or billions of years.
(3) Retrograde rotation of the planet Venus and horizontal rotation of Uranus are inconsistent with theories of explosive debris from a "Big Bang."

Facts that can be explained only by the Bible’s version of creation:
• Days, months, and years are all measured by astronomical functions of the earth and moon, while the seven-day week—used across the globe—is a measurement which originates only in Scripture.
• Moral laws written on the conscience ("common law") exist in civilized and isolated tribal cultures alike because they originate with the Creator.
• The enormous power which both originated matter and set creation in motion is the might of God’s spoken Word; the same radical power of God’s Word explains other miraculous events of the Bible and is contained in the Bible itself.

Compilation by Anne Lang Bundy, © 2007, 2010, all rights reserved.