In the Beginning:
Science and Genesis 1-11
Class Five - SPACE/TIME and DAYS 1-3
Back
to Genesis Chapter 1; Genesis 1:2 states PP:
“And the earth was formless and void, and
darkness was over the surface of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving
over the surface of the waters.” Let’s
break this verse down. PP
“And
the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of
the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the
waters.” This is the same word Hebrew
word, erets, that we saw in verse 1 and
therefore still refers to the component of matter in the universe. PP
“And the earth was formless and void, and darkness
was over the surface of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the
surface of the waters.” So here we see
that the matter existed, but not in any form.
There were no stars or planets, which weren’t formed until day four,
only the basic matter component of the space/matter continuum. PP
“And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was
over the surface of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the
surface of the waters.” As God is light,
one might question how he could create a world in darkness. God says in part in Isaiah 45:6-7: PP
“I am the Lord, and there is no other, The One forming light
and creating darkness …”
So at this point, matter and space existed, but not in energized
fashion. Light is a form of energy and
at this point there was no energy, so there was no light. Darkness is the absence of light. The Hebrew word for face or surface, panim, is often translated “presence” so here
God is simply stating that all that had been created so far, matter and space,
was formless and without energy.
The
remainder of verse 2 states: PP
“and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of
the waters.” Scripture clearly teaches
as we have already seen that Christ, the second person of the Trinity, is the
creator of the universe and all that it contains. Here the Holy Spirit, the third person of the
Trinity, is participating in creation.
PP
“and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of
the waters.” The Hebrew word translated
here as “moving” or “moved” is rachaph, which
occurs only three times in the Old Testament.
PP
In Jeremiah
23:9 it is translated “shake” and in Deuteronomy 32:11 it is translated
“flutter” so the idea seems to be mainly that of a rapid back and forth motion,
or vibration. PP
“and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the
waters.” We’ve already seen that
“surface” could also be translated “face” or “presence.” So the matter included in the reference to
“earth” in verse one clearly includes water.
We don’t have time to delve into the unique properties of water that
make life possible. Suffice it to say
that liquid water is a necessary ingredient for carbon-based life, but not a
sufficient ingredient. Liquid water has
never been discovered outside of the earth, but even if it was discovered the
implication that therefore life may also be discovered is a non sequitur, i.e.
it does not follow. We’ll perhaps
discuss that more later.
Proverbs
8, which primarily addresses wisdom, also in that regard discusses the
activities of the Creator, Jesus Christ, during the first three days of
creation. Verses 23 & 24 state: PP
“…From the beginning, from the earliest times
of the earth, when there were no depths I was brought forth.” Putting that with the latter portion of verse
two indicates the water, with matter suspended in it, was without form
initially, but through the “modeling” by the Holy Spirit is now taking
shape. While not stated specifically
here, that shape was PP
spherical as we shall see shortly.
That is confirmed by Proverbs 8: 27, which states: PP
“When He established the heavens I was there, when He
inscribed a circle on the face of the deep.”
Here is another example of the Bible being confirmed by
science. We of course know the earth is
a sphere, yet would that have been readily apparent “in the beginning?”
PP
It’s quiz time
again! What is a pejorative, besides
knuckle-dragging fundamentalist, that evolutionists use to dismissively
describe those that believe in creation and a young earth?
Defenders
of Darwinian evolution sometimes compare their critics to believers PP
in a flat earth. According to the standard story, Christians
used to believe for theological reasons that the earth is flat. When modern science demonstrated that the earth
is actually a sphere, most Christians acknowledged their mistake, but a few
continue to persist in their outmoded belief.
Since modern science has likewise demonstrated the truth of Darwinian
evolution (so the story goes), its critics are like people who still believe in
a flat earth. So in addition to being
knuckle-draggers, we are labeled flat earthers.
But the story is false. It began as fiction, and it was elevated to a
historical claim by late-19th century Darwinists who used it as a weapon to
ridicule Christians.
A major promulgator of the flat earth
myth was the 19th-century American writer Washington Irving. In his fictional History of the Life and
Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1828),
It is obvious when you think about it that Christopher
Columbus and those that sent him on his voyage knew the earth was round. The purpose of his trip was to find as
short-cut to
And
in addition to Proverbs 8:27 the Bible clearly teaches a spherical earth as
well PP
in Isaiah 40:22: “It
is He who sits above the vault (circle) of the earth.” PP That was penned nearly 2,700 years
ago.
Two of
Let’s get back to the text. At the end of verse two we have, through the
processing by the Holy Spirit, a spherical shape to the waters containing
matter. This spherical shape resulted
from the impartation of energy into the water and earth particles, activating
gravitational forces that formed the sphere, which also began to rotate as is
clear from verse four.
Genesis 1:3-5 state PP:
“Then God said, “Let there be light”; and
there was light. And God saw that the
light was good’ and God separated the light from the darkness. And God called the light day, and the
darkness He called night. And there was
evening and there was morning, one day.”
Many
think this means the sun was created, but that occurs on day four. This light does not come from a physical
object. It is a creative, energizing,
act of God prior to the creation of objects other than the earth.
We’ve
already discussed the Hebrew word “yom” and this is
the first time God uses it and he clearly defines it as meaning the “light”
time, while night was to be associated with the “dark” time. In the remainder of Genesis 1, God always
does his creating in the day, with nothing occurring between each evening and
morning. There are of course theological
meanings to light and darkness, but we won’t take time to examine that except
for 2nd Corinthians 4:6 PP:
“For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of
darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”
So God completed
His first day’s work, which involved forming the sphere of the earth and
imparting energy to the sphere to cause it to rotate on its axis and providing
a source of light on one side of the earth, thus initiating the 24-hour
day/night cycle that continues to today on the earth. While the creation of light obviously
included visible light, it also included the remainder of the light spectrum,
and presumably the electromagnetic and nuclear forces that are involved in the
creation of the physical universe. From
short wave gamma rays to long radio waves electromagnetic radiation includes a
vast range of frequencies spanning at least 75 octaves. Visible light occupies only one octave of
this range.
So on
this first day the physical universe had been created and energized and was
ready for further shaping in subsequent days when he created the sun, moon,
stars and planets.
We now
have an earth that is no longer without form, but it certainly is not
inhabitable in its present form. On days
two and three He completes the process of making the earth habitable.
As we
move further into Genesis Chapter 1 it is important to remember a fundamental
and very significant difference between the Biblical view and the view of most
of the Biblical non-conformists or evolutionists. God recognized this significant difference
would arise and addressed it in 2nd Peter 3:3-6: “Know this first of all, that in the last
days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, and
saying, PP
“Where is
the promise of His coming? For ever
since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning
of creation.” For when they maintain
this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago
and the earth was formed out of water and by water, through which the world at
that time was destroyed, being flooded with water.”
In the
early 1800’s Charles Lyell PP,
the foremost geologist of his day, published PP
Principles of Geology in the
early 1830s. Charles Darwin took
Principles on the HMS Beagle shortly after it was published and it had a
significant impact on him. Principles
espoused a new geologic theory, uniformitarianism. Simply put PP,
uniformitarianism states that the present is the key
to the past. In the words of 2nd
Peter: “all continues just as it was
from the beginning of creation.” It
rejects the catastrophism of the Bible, such as the
Great Flood, and proposes that what we see now is the way things have always
been. While we will deal with this in
Genesis Chapter 7 it also relates to what we are going to be covering for the
next few weeks. And while we desire to
interpret Scripture correctly, it is often difficult to view these events in
other than a uniformitarian mindset.
As we go
through Chapter 1, remember that we are dealing with creation events which are
unique and therefore cannot be subject to scientific discovery. Furthermore, in addition to being unique
events, they were mostly destroyed by the Great Flood described in Genesis
Chapter 7. A simple example of that
would be equating the current Tigris and Euphrates rivers in
“Now a river flowed out of
So while
science certainly impacts the plausibility of some of what we will discuss, it
is not always germane to these unique events.
Suffice it to say at this point that the denial of the impact of the
Great Flood skews the results of many of the supposed evidences for evolution
we will address later. With that caveat,
let’s move forward.
Genesis
1:6-8 states PP:
“Then God said, “Let there be an expanse in
the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” And God made the expanse, and separated the
waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the
expanse; and it was so. And God called
the expanse heaven. And there was
evening and there was morning, a second day.”
This is a
somewhat difficult passage that refers to an expanse dividing the waters of the
earth and indicates the expanse and heaven are synonymous. Many have interpreted this to mean that a
canopy of water PP
was
suspended above the earth and that such a model would help explain the long
pre-flood ages such as those matter-of-factly set forth in Genesis Chapter 5
such as Methuselah living 969 years. When we get to Chapter 5 we’ll show
scientifically that those long ages are correct, but for now we’ll only deal
with the canopy.
The canopy model was developed from an
interpretation of the “waters above” when discussing the expanse. From these verses, scientific models were
developed and modified to help deal with
problems that
arose. These models included ideas about the earth’s temperature, atmospheric
color, as well as oxygen concentration to attempt to explain the longevity of man in Genesis 5 and
11.
The proposed models have this canopy fading into
history at the time of the Flood, which would have destroyed it. Researchers thought it could have provided at
least some of the water for the Flood and was associated with the “windows of
heaven” mentioned along with the fountains of the great deep at the onset of
the Flood in Genesis 7.
Currently, however, the pitfalls of the canopy
model have grown to such an extent that most researchers have abandoned the
model. Let’s look at some of those problems PP:
The
Pressure Problem. A canopy
holding only 40 feet of liquid water, or its equivalent weight of vapor (steam)
or ice, would double the earth’s atmospheric
pressure—making oxygen and nitrogen toxic to many animals, including humans.
This is why most vapor canopy theories limit the thickness of water in their
canopy to less than 40 feet.
PP
The Heat Problem. For a vapor canopy holding this amount of
water, the high pressure at the canopy’s base would require that the
temperature at the base exceed a scorching 220°F. Otherwise, the vapor would
condense into a liquid. A vapor canopy whose base had that temperature would
radiate large amounts of heat to the earth’s solid surface. People, plants, and
animals would absorb so much heat from all directions above that life might not
survive. So rather than a canopy producing a globally mild
climate, the larger the canopy, the greater the heat problem.
For liquid or ice particles instead of a vapor to
remain in space above the earth’s atmosphere, they must be in orbit. Anything
in a near-earth orbit must travel about 17,000 miles per hour. Just as a spacecraft generates great heat as
it reenters the atmosphere, orbiting liquid or ice particles would release all
their kinetic energy as heat. This heat would dramatically raise the
atmosphere’s temperature. Even if a
canopy began with the coldest ice possible (absolute zero) or if some heat were
transferred elsewhere, insufferable heat would remain.
A similar problem exists if this
ice were part of a spinning shell surrounding the earth. A rapidly-spinning
shell, providing enough centrifugal force to balance the gravitational force as
much as possible, would still have too much kinetic energy. Once the shell
collapsed, that energy would become scalding heat, enough to “roast” all life
on earth.
PP
The Light Problem. A canopy having only 40
feet of water—in any form—would reflect, refract, absorb, or scatter most light
trying to pass through it. People living
under a 40-foot-thick canopy could see stars only if they were directly
overhead, so their light would have the shortest path through a canopy. Before
the flood, people presumably could see stars, because stars were created for a
purpose as we shall see in Genesis 1:14. Stars would achieve their purpose only
if enough stars could be seen to identify seasonal variations. Therefore, one
needs to see large star patterns, such as constellations—not just a few stars
directly overhead. By looking through a “keyhole” into the night sky, it is
questionable whether one could have seen, recalled, and distinguished
seasonally shifting star patterns through the filter of a 40-foot-thick canopy,
even on a moonless night.
A canopy would also reflect and absorb considerable
sunlight. How then could many tropical plants that require much sunlight today,
have survived for centuries under a preflood canopy? PP
The
Greenhouse Problem. While sunlight can pass through
glass into a greenhouse, heat in a greenhouse has more difficulty radiating
back out through the glass. This greenhouse effect traps heat inside the
greenhouse, raising its temperature. All canopy theories have a greenhouse
problem.
Also, as temperatures under a canopy rose, more water would evaporate from
the earth’s surface, especially its oceans. More water vapor in the air means a
greater greenhouse effect, a warmer atmosphere, and even more evaporation. This
cycle would feed on itself, producing what is called “a runaway greenhouse
effect.” For example, Venus’ atmosphere has experienced a runaway greenhouse
effect. Venus is about 700°F hotter than one would expect based on its distance
from the Sun. The greenhouse effect increases earth’s temperature by about
60°F. PP
The Ultraviolet Problem. Ozone in the earth’s
upper atmosphere blocks the Sun’s destructive ultraviolet light, but a canopy
surrounding the atmosphere would be exposed to ultraviolet light. Therefore,
water in the canopy would dissociate into hydrogen and oxygen, effectively
destroying that canopy.
So
while any canopy must address these problems, Scripture certainly does not
dictate the existence of such a system above the earth.
Aside from the
scientific analysis, there may be a much bigger issue at play: if the canopy
really was part of earth’s atmosphere, then all the stars, sun, and moon would
have been created within the earth's atmosphere as Genesis 1:14 indicates they
were created in the expanse of the heavens.
Furthermore, Psalm 148:4
states PP:
“Praise Him, highest
heavens, And the waters that are above the
heavens!” The psalmist wrote this in a
post-Flood world in the context of other post-Flood aspects. So, it appears
that the windows of heaven still exist at this point. And this is complimented by Genesis
8:2 PP:
“Also the
fountains of the deep and the floodgates of the sky were closed, and the rain
from the sky was restrained.” This verse merely points out that the two sources were stopped
and restrained, not necessarily done away with. These two verses suggest that
the windows of heaven remained after the Flood. The canopy model would have to
explain when and how they suddenly dissipated, and without any basis for this
in Scripture.
As I mentioned, I have been teaching
courses on the creation/evolution issue for about 20 years. Until now I have generally supported the
probability of a canopy being addressed in these verses, but I now believe these
scientific difficulties make such a position untenable. Nor is it now needed to explain the long ages set forth in Genesis 5, as we shall see in Class 10 re genetics.
Let’s look at verses 7 & 8 again PP:
“and God made the
expanse, and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters
which were above the expanse, and it was so.
And God called the expanse heaven.
And there was evening and there was morning a second day.” I’m going to challenge you to think outside
of the box now. Notice that verse 8
states PP:
“And God called the expanse heaven.” What did God say about His creation in
Genesis 1:31? PP
And God saw all that He had made, and
behold it was very good.” Since Genesis
3 the whole earth has groaned (Rom. 8:22) as a result of sin, but before
Genesis 3 the earth and everything in it was very good in the sight of God. We sometimes use the phrase “heaven on earth”
and verse 8 equates the expanse with heaven.
I certainly can’t be dogmatic about this, but I submit to you that the
earth at this time was in fact heaven on earth.
God created man to live forever before the Fall,
and it’s reasonable to think that prior to the corruption of sin that led to
death the earth would have been man’s heaven.
I believe these verses simply state that the expanse was the earth’s
crust and the waters above the earth resided above that, perhaps in what we
call space. But let’s move on.
Genesis 1:9&10 state PP:
“Then God said, “Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one
place, and let the dry land appear”; and it was so. And God called the dry land earth, and the
gathering of the waters He called seas; and God saw that it was good.”
This was the first time that God
labeled creation as good. He has
completed the formation of the earth to sustain life by bringing forth the
land. While we’ll examine it later, the waters below the
heavens, or the earth’s crust, were gathered into subterranean chambers that
were all linked and provided the PP
“fountains
of the great deep” which burst open in Genesis 7:11. The land and the seas were created.
The pre-flood earth was quite
different from today’s earth in many ways that we’ll examine later. Approximately half the earth’s water was
below the earth’s crust, so the earth’s surface had about half the water it has
today and therefore a much larger land mass.
We’ll see this later, but the flood produced today’s ocean basin’s, some
of which are seven miles deep.
Genesis 1:11 states PP:
“Then God said, “Let the earth sprout
vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit after their
kind, with seed in them, on the earth”; and it was so.” Let me refresh your memory of our differing
creation events with our PP
visual contrast again. So Plants
were created on day three while the sun wasn’t created until day four. Can you think of a reason why God did it in what
we view to be an illogical order? I
submit it was to confirm the days of creation were 24-hour days as the plants
would have died without photosynthesis to fuel them.
Regardless of your view of the length
of the creation events, whether they are millions of years or 24-hour days, as
we move through the creation events it will be clear that the Biblical
chronology and the evolution chronology are not in sync. As we’ve already seen, the Biblical
chronology has the waters created first, followed by the earth and then, while
we haven’t gotten there yet, the stars and planets. The evolution chronology, surprise, surprise,
is just the opposite. Obviously, if the
evolution chronology was correct the days in Genesis could not be 24-hour days
and the Biblical creation chronology is also erroneous.
The evolutionists have a molten earth
being formed 4.5 billion years ago, and the seas not appearing until 3.8
billion years ago. In between those two
events, their model indicates it took three hundred million years for that
molten earth to solidify and cool.
Let’s look to the scientific evidence
relevant to this question instead of the postulations of a worldview that must
have millions and billions of years for its creation events to be
plausible. Let’s look at the base rock
of the earth, granite, to see which view the evidence supports.
Before we see the amazing
evidence counter to the evolutionary theory of granite formation we need a
brief lesson in radiometric dating and the half lives of radioactive elements. So let’s begin with a video segment regarding
dating methods and their significant problems. (Evolution: Fact or Belief? - about 10 minutes).
We just saw the significant problems in the
assumptions used to date things. We’re going
to see more on this later – it’s important!
Let’s summarize them. PPx2
What you didn’t see is the fact that wide ranges
are generated in these tests and the one felt to be the closest to the desired
date is selected. For a further example
of the extreme inaccuracy of these methods, lets visit
the
we see
the Cardenas Basalt flow that runs down the side of the
(a) 516±30 million years (the potassium-argon age), PP (b)
1,111±81 million years (the rubidium-strontium age), PP (c) 1,588±170
million years (the samarium-neodymium age). So would someone please tell me the age of this
lava flow? I say it’s PP none of
the above.