This is actually a research paper I wrote last year, but with the recent talk about the debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham, I thought this would be fitting to post.

Many people know I’m a Christian. In fact, I would say, every person that has had a conversation with me knows that. Growing up in a strong Christian home, I accepted Christ into my life at a young age and I have gone to church every Sunday. I remember loving Sunday school and Veggietales and worship songs and flannel graphs and the rest that comes with being a church kid. But I also remember something else about going to church. When I was young, that something was a sort of haze. I didn’t really understand it, but I knew it was there hanging over everything. It was in the demeanor of others – something in the way they treated my family. It was some sort of cold attitude. It would get heavier and heavier until my family would leave that church and try another.

Several years back, after another church jump, I asked my parents why we always had to leave churches. I got an answer: evolution. Now, I grew up without that word having a negative connotation. I grew up with it in my science textbooks and on the bindings of other books on my shelves and with my dad talking about it in regards to his work and past school experience (he has a PhD in evolutionary biology). In fact, I didn’t know that “evolution” was problematic for most Christians today. So naturally, I was confused to hear that evolution was the reason we got kicked out of churches.

My parents explained to me how most Christians view evolution and six-day creation. I was told how most Christians view Genesis as being literal and believe evolution contradicts the Bible. However, once I was made aware of the normal view Christians take on evolution, Genesis and creation, I noticed this topic all the time. It seemed to be everywhere. I noticed it in sermons and statements of faith that insisted on belief in six day creationism. I noticed this topic in Christian books and pamphlets. Evolution was brought up by my friends when they told me about their vacation to the Creation Museum or when together they agreed about how evil evolution was and made fun of it. With my Christian friends, evolution was always something that must be disparaged but never discussed. In their minds, it had to be wrong and was as horrible as the antichrist. Normally, during such conversations about evolution, I didn’t say a word and merely observed to try and figure out what Christians really believed about this issue.

With all these new views and the one held by my parents floating around in my head, I decided I had to investigate this issue for myself. If my church experience has taught me anything, it’s that I can’t be narrow minded or automatically accept what I was told growing up. I had to see what science was claiming about evolution and what Genesis really said about creation. Did these two really conflict? Is six-day creation the only biblical explanation for creation? My predicament is unique because I’ve grown up very close with both sides of the argument. After researching and a lot of thinking, I decided that six-day literal creation less than ten thousand years ago is not the only legitimate biblical view of creation nor is it the most plausible conclusion based on science.

How can I claim that there could be any other biblical view of creation besides six day literal creation? Before deciding how to interpret Genesis, it’s important to determine what the Bible is and how it communicates. As Christians, we believe the Bible is the inspired Word of God. We believe that the Bible is God’s message to us, His people. But what is that message? It’s the message of salvation; of how Jesus lived, died, and rose again to pay the price of our sin so that we might be reconciled to God.

But how did God communicate that message of salvation through Jesus? God had to communicate in ways his people could comprehend. Peter Enns, a biblical scholar, writes in his book Inspiration and Incarnation, “When God reveals himself, he always does so to people which means that he must speak and act in ways that they will understand…That the Bible, at every turn shows how “connected” it is to its own world is a necessary consequence of God incarnating himself” (Enns, 20). In other words, God spoke to the first century Jews in first century concepts. As John Walton puts it, “the Bible was written for us, but it wasn’t written to us.” In order to understand the Bible and its message, we need to not only interpret every passage in view of the rest of the Bible, but we also need to know how the original audience and author understood it (Haarsma and Haarsma, 84). Recently, I attended a friends’ bible study. They use a system that I found fit perfectly with this idea. According to this system, after reading a given passage, the reader should figure out what the passage meant in the time that it was written or the meaning it had in “their town”. Next, to see what the meaning is today or in “our town”, the reader must cross a river between the two towns and find the bridge or the eternal meaning of the passage. This system helps to keep any given phrase or verse from saying something it is not meant to or taking it out of context. I found this picture quite helpful.

Not only is it important to see what a passage meant for the original audience, but it’s equally as crucial to find the style of the passage. The Bible uses many different forms of writing that include poetry, narration, fiction, history, law, and prophecy. By identifying what style type a specific passage is helps to answer another question: is the Bible to be understood literally or not? Even verses that seem to be in history or narration form are accepted among Christians as not literal. For example, Deuteronomy 28:12 (as well as Psalms and Jeremiah) states that the Lord opens up the heavens and rain falls from the storehouses of His bounty. Modern science has shown that water evaporates, vapor forms into clouds during condensation and then falls as precipitation. One could say that the clouds are God’s “storehouse”, but when Deuteronomy was written, the people of that time really believed that there were storehouses in the skies. If Christians take this passage literally today, there would be a conflict between what the Bible says and what science says about precipitation, and yet I know of no Christians that reject meteorology and take their sole view of rain from scripture. This is where the “our town, their town” philosophy is needed. We need to find the eternal meaning of this passage (God has governance over the natural processes of the earth) and not make the verse say something it was never meant to say (there are literal storehouses of rain in the skies). When I asked one of my conservative Christian friends what she thought of this passage, she replied that God was using word pictures that were familiar in that time. That is my point exactly.

In a similar way, we need to discover what Genesis 1 and 2 is saying about the creation account. All Christians agree that God created the earth. First, let’s find the context of Genesis, by which I mean the picture of the world and creation that the original audience had. Most Christians know that Genesis is part of the books of Moses, but I think they fail to appreciate that Genesis is God’s revelation to Moses of a past that was ancient history even for Moses. The story of creation had to make sense to the people of Moses’ time, in their culture, using imagery of their time. We don’t read the story as it exists in God’s “town”; we read it as He has translated it into Moses’ “town”.

To understand Genesis, a Christian should be familiar with the other creation myths of Moses’ time, not to compare them, but to get into the mindset of 2000 BC Israelites. Understanding what those people thought was important in a creation story will help us today see what is important in Genesis. None of these pagan creation stories addresses the scientific aspect of creation but rather addresses the supernatural aspects. The Egyptian creation story from that time says that there was a primordial sea or chaos ruled by the gods Nun and Atum, who brought order by separating land from sea and sky from Earth. Both the land and the sky were formed from the physical bodies of gods. The Mesopotamian creation story, Enuma Elish, states that the heavens and earth were created by multiple gods who rearranged existing formless matter; they fought each other, and the winners formed the earth and firmament with the bodies of the conquered gods. Both of these cultures assumed that the Earth was a flat disk floating in an ocean. Heaven was a solid dome or firmament that arched over the Earth and held back an ocean above. Doors let the sun, moon, and stars enter and exit each day, and gates opened to release rain.

There are some obvious similarities between these pagan myths and the creation story in Genesis. These ancient Near-Eastern civilizations held the same idea of what the Earth and the heavens looked like; they had the same ancient cosmology. One of the similarities is the mentioning of a firmament or a dome above the Earth. Another is the idea of waters above and below. And even that the Earth was nothing more than a formless watery abyss before supernatural intervention is included both in the Bible and these creation myths (Glover, 58-62). This cosmology is obviously not correct. As we all know, there is no solid dome in the sky or water above the atmosphere. So did God make a mistake allowing Moses to write about such ideas? A better way of looking at this potential problem is to see that the purpose of Genesis is to challenge the ancient idea of the gods and creation by them. Glover states in his book Beyond the Firmament,“…rather than seize the opportunity to overturn the commonly held view of the universe which was riddled with theological and cosmological error, God seems to hijack the popular cosmogony and use it as a vehicle to set the theological record straight, leaving the cosmological record intact” (Glover, 63).

From this, I (as well as hundreds of others) conclude that the eternal message of Genesis is not the description of the physical Earth and heavens. In fact, the description of these two – as shown in Genesis one – is not correct.

Secondly, to discover what Genesis 1 and 2 is saying about the creation account, Christians should try to find the writing style of the book. I can not prove for certain what style Genesis takes, but I can still share my opinion on this matter. Many Christian theologians have pointed out that especially Genesis 1 takes on a very structured format with the six days and even the order in which God creates things. From this, these theologians have concluded that Genesis has a poetic form (probably to communicate that God is orderly and his creation is complete). Another argument of how Genesis is poetic and not literal is that the creation story in Genesis 1 conflicts with the account in Genesis 2. I assume this same view that Genesis is poetic.

So what is the eternal message of Genesis? I think most Christians would agree without even studying Genesis that the eternal message of the book is that God created the heavens and the Earth.

Now that the context, form, and eternal message of Genesis 1 and 2 have been determined, what does science say about the age of the Earth and evolution of species? The scientific consensus is that the universe (space, time, and matter) began 13.6 billion years ago with what is called the Big Bang. Our solar system and the Earth in it formed 4.6 billion years ago. About 3 billion years of geological history (volcanic activity, movement of tectonic plates, sedimentation and erosion) is recorded in Earth’s rocks and minerals. Scientists have reached this conclusion about the age of the Earth, not because of a desire to prove the Bible false, but because of years of research, experiments, testing theories and organizing well-known and accepted facts in a search for truth that has again and again proven this.

Charles Darwin proposed his theory of natural selection and common descent to explain the diversity of life and biogeography that he observed. Although there are several related components of modern evolutionary theory, the overarching claim is that all of life on Earth descended from a common ancestor. Essentially all lines of biological science, whether it be genetics, developmental biology, paleontology, or ecology, confirm this central claim of evolution.

I accept both these facts – that the earth is billions of years old and that the diversity of life came about by evolution. But why do I trust what science says about these issues? Obviously, I’m not a scientist and am not qualified to evaluate the evidence directly. And my purpose in this paper is not to try to explain the evidence for evolution and an old Earth. Instead, I’d like to explain why I accept these facts and even science in general.

First, thousands of scientists in hundreds of different scientific fields, including Christian scientists like my father, all accept the ideas of an old Earth and evolution. Many of them have even helped to form these ideas. In my way of thinking, these scientists can’t all be wrong. Because science is not trying to disprove God or the Bible and is, in fact, looking for truth in God’s world, I don’t see how the scientific consensus is likely to be wrong.

An old Earth and evolution make sense of the physical earth and diversity of species. Many questions and patterns in nature can only be understandably explained by these two ideas. Through my own science studies of astronomy, biology and geology, evolution and an earth that is billions of years old have played a large role in making sense of the facts. Even now, after reading Haarsma and Haarsma’s book Origins and watching other science and religion videos (such as Test of Faith and Pathways to Truth), science makes sense of nature more and more as it should, for that is its purpose.

Personally, after growing up close to arguments on both sides of the evolution/old Earth dilemma, the arguments for evolution seem to make good sense. The counter arguments to young-Earth creationism are compelling and seem, quite frankly, to be true and right. The so-called “scientific” evidence for a young earth seems very confusing and doesn’t even address all the issues. After digging a bit deeper, it is easy to disregard all scientific evidence for a young Earth.

As I learn more, as I hope to, and as science discovers more, I am sure countless more questions will rightly arise. But for now, from where I am as a believer and a student, I have no reason to distrust the facts that science claims about the age of the Earth and evolution. Many believers would say that these ideas are in direct conflict with what the Bible says. In my mind, and in the minds of hundreds of scientists, the eternal message of Genesis does not conflict with what science says about the age of the Earth and the evolution of species.

A lot of the conflicts between believers and atheists over these issues arise from misunderstandings. Many atheists try to use science as a way to disprove God, although science itself claims nothing one way or another about the existence of a God. Some atheist scientists make personal conclusions based on science. However, their atheistic conclusions are not science. As previously stated, science makes no declaration about the existence of God. Science is only the study of nature, which I believe is God’s creation. Science and religion really have no argument with each other besides the one believers and atheists create.

So is it really possible that the Bible and science don’t conflict? There are actually several views that try to merge our understanding of God’s word and God’s world. According to Haarsma and Haarsma, these views can be divided into two basic categories: concordist and non-concordist. Since concordist literally means “to agree with”, the concordist views of creation take Genesis literally and suggests that there scientific evidence for six-day creation. For the most part, a concordist view of creation states that God created the Earth in the order presented in Genesis 1 and the things mentioned there are accurate scientifically (e.g., firmament equals atmosphere). In contrast, non-concordist views would say that God created the Earth using a different order and timing than in Genesis (Haarsma and Haarsma, 98). In these non-concordist views, Genesis uses a poetic rather than literal structure to communicate the eternal truths about God and creation. Here is an abbreviation of several different concordist and non-concordist views as presented in Origins.

At the beginning of this paper, I said that I would claim that six-day literal creation is not the only legitimate biblical view of creation or the most plausible conclusion based on science. Now, it is time for me to state my actual conclusions and opinions about this matter. From my research, I would have to agree more with a non-concordist view of creation. I would say, as I have done, that Genesis takes a more poetic form and that the six days are not literal; moreover, I would say that God used evolution to create the Earth and the universe and that the universe is still evolving. As I grow older, my opinions will no doubt evolve too; they are in no way set in stone. But I am comfortable with this view for now, and I believe that it is not in conflict with the Bible or prevents me from following God with all that is in me. In fact, learning more about the creation of the Earth has made me more in awe of the complexity of the galaxy and the God that created it.

These conclusions were important for me to reach on my own because these ideas and issues have been a part of my life growing up. Emphasis has been placed on them both from the scientific and religious points of view. Many Christians think that science can turn people away from their faith and I have to say from personal experience that this can be true, but not for the reasons Christians think. Many church kids that go away to study science at college find evolution to be true in the same way I have. These kids are told growing up that science is against the Bible and wrong, and so when they find out otherwise, their faith is impaired. They think, as they are told growing up, they have to choose between their religion and this new knowledge of science when they don’t. If only these kids were told growing up that science and religion can mix, many peoples’ faith might be saved.

In my own life, growing up in the church was a hard, painful experience because of the many church jumps and constant judging and scorn around me. I had accepted both God and evolution, but I didn’t know the deeper meaning of either. Later, because of the way my family was treated by Christians, I was almost resolved to walk entirely way from my faith but more from the church. I could not imagine a loving God with such hateful people. I would pray, “Lord, save me from your followers.” I never knew the love and family-like attitude of the church that I had been told exists. I thought of Christians as the biggest hypocrites and haters. Science itself was not the reason I almost walked way, but because of the way Christians treated me because of it.

Thankfully, my family found a church that truly had the heart of Jesus. And with the encouragement of some wonderful godly girls, my faith was renewed and I began a true deep relationship with Christ during my first missions trip in the back seat of a very bumpy van ride through the hills of Mongolia. My faith is still growing along with my understanding of science.

My hope for you, the reader, is not that you will accept evolution and an old Earth although that would be wonderful, but rather that you will be willing to accept people whose ideas differ from your own. I also hope you see that six-day creation is not the only possibility. I know this paper has not answered all the questions you doubtless have about science and religion. In fact, I hope you have more questions about this topic than when you started reading. I emphatically encourage you to look more into these ideas and truly find out for yourself both sides of the argument. At the very least, if you call yourself a Christian, don’t deface the name of Jesus by rejecting and judging those around you and their ideas especially if you have not studied or are not knowledgeable about that subject. Instead, I urge you to love. 

Bibliography

Enns, Peter. Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005. Print.

Glover, Gordon J. Beyond The Firmament: Understanding Science and the Theology of Creation. Chesapeake, VA: Watertree Press, 2007. Print.

Haarsma, Deborah B. and Loren D. Haarsma. Origins: Christian Perspectives on Creation, Evolution, and Intelligent Design. Grand Rapids, MI: Faith Alive Christian Resources, 2011. Print.

Religion and Science: Pathways to Truth. Francis S. Collins. 2008. Film.

Test of Faith: Does Science Threaten Belief in God? Michael Ruse. 2009. Film