Why Genesis 1 – 3 cannot be read literally and make sense.

It is the first time that I have posted on this blog in a while. However, this is a subject which rightly or wrongly has become an area of key contention within Christianity. The idea of a young earth versus what I would feel is the more reasonable view, even from reading the Genesis 1 – 3 section, as being more reasonable. I understand, that as I write this post, there will be people out there who disagree, and if you do, please feel free to comment if you are reading from facebook, or from my blog at www.gpeoples.net. This is a topic that came up at our Christian Union meeting this week, and it seems to be a topic that has come up in discussion a lot this week. I thought I might as well lay out my position on the so-called “Science – Religion” debate.

My view is that it is highly untenable to regard that the universe is as is commonly described by Young Earth Creationists as being 6,000 – 10,000 years old, particularly when the evidence points to this period in time being what we know as the Agricultural Age as humans moved from hunting and gathering to cultivating crops and livestock. If we also calculate the age of the universe from the Big Bang to the present, based on how far the universe itself has spread, the most accurate estimate isn’t in thousands of years, but rather in billions (13.7 billion years). The earth itself is thought to be around 4.3 billion years old.  This is before we even get into discussing the nature of evolution, which even the most ardent young earth creationists argue exists in some form, distinguishing between micro and macro-evolution.

What little I know of science, and I’m not going to argue to be an expert because quite frankly I’m not ,makes me wonder and marvel at God’s creation, both from an assessment of what we can know scientifically about our universe, and what we can know about the why of the universe from the Scriptures. I have a huge amount of respect for those who are currently doing such work at the minute, as they are not only unfolding what is true about existence and what we are, which is valuable in itself. For Christians such as myself, these people are unfolding the wonders of God’s creation, step by step, and it is amazing:

Friends of mine who are skeptics have shown me this video as some display of how our universe is so big, and that it is absurd to think that humans have a privileged position in the universe (Did we?), and that there is no way there is a God who could care for each one of us. Like the Psalmist in when he writes:

what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?

Psalm 8:4 (ESV)

This video, to me, would be a testament to God’s omnipotence. God in the vastness of the universe that He has created, still can care for us. God in the universe that He has created, even through what we can find out through science, shows more and more about how amazing He is in His creative power on a daily basis. At least this is what this video communicates to me as a Christian.

Just in a few thoughts, a number of issues arise for me when we come to the idea that the universe, the world and everything else could possibly have been created 6,000 – 10,000 years ago, excluding the reason from human development from hunter-gatherers to cultivators of livestock and crops.

1) The Bible does not actually give a defined date for when the universe began, or when the world came into existence, or indeed when humanity started to exist

This is a crucial point. The only dates we have for the beginning of creation, are based on a literal reading of all the genealogies of the Biblical text in some hope that we could establish a beginning date for the universe. The earliest effort I can recall of when such a date was provided (please correct me if I am mistaken) was by the Anglican Archbishop of Armagh James Ussher who lived from 1581 – 1656 who very precisely dated the time of the Creation to the night preceeding the 23rd of October 4004BC. The point is, all datings of the Creation have been derived from men. Naturally, they are all based not only on the genealogies, but also on the assumption that the Universe was created in 6 literal days.

2) The sun and the moon weren’t created until the fourth day of Creation in the Genesis 1 account -

The Genesis account of Creation for those of you who are familiar with it, is spaced out throughout 6 days from the structuring of the world, to the formation of plant and animal life. There is a question surrounding the word used for day in Hebrew, which is yom, and what context it is meant to mean in the passage, but I will leave that issue aside for now. If we are to take these days as 24 hour days, we would find this to be soon problematic, as many will note that there was no sun and no moon until the 4th day.

And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars.

Genesis 1:4 (ESV)

Many assume that this is a contradiction, and indeed if you regard the days in Genesis as being literal 24 hour days, no doubt you will find it to be a contradiction. Precisely because one determines hours, based on the sun, and the sun and the moon essentially define what the days are. Days are determined by the very existence of the sun.

One piece of reasoning that I have heard for why the sun and the moon would be created on the fourth day of Creation, was to go against pagan accounts that would have been prevalent amongst the neighbouring tribes to the Hebrews about the sun and the moons being gods. Rather the Genesis writer, according to this reasoning, is saying no, in fact there is only one God and Him alone, and He has created the sun and the moon and they are subservient to Him. They are not to be worshipped, but rather He who is unseen and beyond all things is to be worshipped and reverenced through what He has created. I personally find this a convincing explanation as to why the writer has done this.

So, given that there is no basis, for assuming that the days in the Genesis account are actually 24 hour days, there is the fascinating possibility that these days could actually account for the development of the universe as we know it through science, with complex lifeforms such as animals and humans forming through Darwinian evolution as intended by the Creator of the universe, our God.

Isn’t it wonderful that we can actually think that science could actually reverence God? Again, we have to remember that science as we know it and how it developed, was given the tools to develop in a Christian society. Christianity allowed for the university system to prosper in Europe. This isn’t to say that Christianity has always been a help in this process, it hasn’t, and this is unfortunate. Young Earth Creationism provides one of the biggest challenges to a reasonable understanding to God’s creation. How tragic is that?

3) Why does Cain fear being killed by humans in Genesis 4? -

In Genesis chapter 4, we find something curious that would lead us to find a literal reading of Genesis 1 – 3 to be difficult in explaining the wonders of God’s creation. Cain after killing his brother Abel, complains to God about the gravity of the punishment He has given him for the murder:

Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, you have driven me today away from the ground, and from your face I shall be hidden. I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.”

Genesis 4:13-14 (ESV)

Hang on here you might be saying. If Adam and Eve were the only people that existed on the earth, how come Cain is fearing being killed by other people? It’s a very good question, and one that would lead me to the conclusion, that perhaps there were other people in existence at the time.

One question, I think we need to ask more as believers in particular when we read the Bible is, what is this actually telling me? Is this what I want it to say, or is this what it actually says.

4) Genesis evidently isn’t a science book to begin with – One common objection I personally have about Genesis and how people have come to read it is, that they read it as a science book. This is naturally what happens when you are reading something literally. I’ve challenged above that Genesis can be really read literally and I have given reasons from both science and from the way that the passage is written itself, albeit in a brief fashion. One of the questions we need to ask is why was Genesis written, and who was it written to?

Was it written to explain everything in the universe, and how it happened, or was it written to explain why it happened? If it was written to explain how exactly the universe came into being, there is a difficulty involved. If we take the Genesis 1 account itself, all it really says concerning about how things came into being is that God said that He intended something to happen and happened. If I am to take one isolated example:

And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so

Genesis 1:24 (ESV)

It is notable, that God doesn’t give a scientific description as to how God did what He intended to do. Rather it merely says that God intended for something to be so, and through His power it was. This raises the intriguing possibility, that we as humans can look to the book of existence and science as well as the book of Scriptures, and learn with excitement as to how God did this. Genesis doesn’t go into the exact hows of the universe, but it certainly does go into the why.

I would pose that Christian living, has to consider both the hows and the whys. Most secular thought (atheist and agnostic) doesn’t care about why the world came into being, and I will say that Young Earth Creationism doesn’t want to explore the possibility that the hows of the universe go against their limited interpretation of Genesis 1, not because the Bible says so, but rather that they don’t want it to. The real challenge for Christians, as far as I am concerned, is to live out the why, and consider the hows, and express the Gospel in the light of how the world really is, and in the light of how the world should be.

We are wasting our time if we are to dwell on whether or not Genesis is a science book. We have a great message to share, and a great example to live by. That is the example of Jesus Christ, who holds all things together:

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Colossians 1:15-17 (ESV)

The reason I came to write this post is firstly, because I believe that Christians who laud and celebrate science must be willing to challenge views that may hinder the Christian message. Christians who laud science as the wonders of God’s creation should be willing to show people who take a more literal meaning of the passage, and other people who seriously wrestle with this as a part of their relationship with God that it is not only perfectly acceptable, but praiseworthy to honour God through scientific exploration. I also wrote this post for skeptics who commonly criticize Christians who find harmony between their belief in God, and science as being a reasonable explanation for how the world is. They needn’t be mutually exclusive, as they are both describing the same thing. How God came to create and structure the universe.

If you believe that God created the universe, as the facts are demonstrating it to be, it isn’t an act of blasphemy. It’s reality. The earth is billions of years old, the universe is billions of years old, and biological evolution accounts for our origins. There are plenty of resources out there to help you. We don’t need to deny science. Indeed, precisely the reason why Richard Dawkins defines faith as something believed in the absence of evidence, or even in the teeth of evidence, is perhaps because of this conflict generated from reading Genesis.

In particular, I’d recommend this site, and this one.

I am open to question on this, I may be entirely wrong on this entire topic. If you feel so, please comment either on this blog or via facebook, I’d love to get people chatting about this.