The Lost Glory of the Earth
In the previous post I discussed Theistic Evolution and how I believe that someone who is persuaded
that natural selection working on random mutations is an adequate explanation for the origin of plant and animal life can hold to that and still
believe in the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture because Genesis 1 could be
read in a way that allows someone to see God using evolution as an intermediary
means for the creation of living creatures. I discussed as well that a theistic
evolutionist would have to make a distinction regarding people and animals due
to God embossing human beings with His image and in so doing making us forever
different from animals¹. This distinction is a
necessary foundation for human rights and one that thankfully even atheistic
evolutionists² seem to believe.
The reason I think it’s possible to see evolution in Genesis
1 revolves around the phrase that God uses a couple of times where He says “Let
the Earth bring forth” referring to plants and the different forms of animal
life. I advised that this could be
understood literally or figuratively and if understood literally it would seem
to indicate that God was using the earth as an intermediate means for the
creation of plants and animals. This
could be understood as God directing the changes in Earth’s climate and terrain
to cause random mutations to benefit certain animals in such a way as to make
the traits in those animals become prominent in that population resulting in
the eventual change of that species.
Crabs are Different from Sponges and Octopuses have Eyes
I am obviously aware that there are many people in the world
who believe that evolution is an adequate explanation for the origin of animal
life and my statement above came from reading Scripture to see if it could be
read in a way to accommodate that view of origins. And like I said earlier I think that it can
within some limits³. But I say this more
as a statement of possibility rather than from a place of conviction. I am personally not persuaded that Darwin’s
explanation of origins is a good one.
This largely revolves around the fossil record not showing gradual
changes in animal forms like Darwin predicted.
The fossils instead show sudden appearances of animal forms with no
explicable links to prior ancestors.
This is most pronounced in the comparison between the Pre-Cambrian and
Cambrian layers with sponges and bacteria showing in the former followed
immediately by skeletal crab-like creatures with digestive systems and eyes in
the latter. The genetic complexity to
get from a sponge to a crab is mind-boggling and to say that it occurred just
in a couple millions of years⁴ is so statistically improbable that
anyone with unbiased mind would call it impossible⁵.
In my mind the fossil record might be the only piece of
objective data that we would have to confirm Darwinist theory and for that to
provide a challenge for evolution is certainly a bad look. Nonetheless many advocates of this theory
have sought other means to offer arguments for evolution. One such is path is through phylogeny. Phylogeny is a way in which advocates of
evolution will compare different animals with one another and through those
comparisons attempt to derive a “tree of life” where the more complex animals
with similar traits are derived from simpler animals with seemingly rudimentary
forms of those traits. The advent of a
new trait represents a different branch on the proverbial tree and animals with
those traits should share many characteristics with each other as a result of
being a part of a shared evolutionary history.
On the surface this seems to make sense – who doesn’t see
similarities in many animals? For
example, don’t most mammals have similar characteristics? Many mammals have symmetrical body plans,
digestive systems, mouths, limbs and eyes.
But when this is examined in detail issues with this concept start to
emerge. Take for example the octopus and
the zebra. An octopus is a cephalopod a
zebra is a vertebrate, but both have eyes. Most Darwinists believe that skeletal
structure (or lack thereof) precedes the development of the eye in evolutionary
history and as such the incredibly complex organ that is the eye would have
to have evolved twice – both in vertebrates and cephalopods. If evolutionary biologists were golfers they
would call that a mulligan because the idea that something as intricate as the
eye evolved in the first place is like saying that Facebook was formed from
online viruses interacting with each other in an endless loop out in some
undisclosed place in the dark web. In other words, it’s pretty ridiculous. And to say it happened twice begins to
approach being preposterous and absurd.
But this seems to be regular operating procedure when constructing a
“tree of life” and rather than calling this a mulligan they would call the eye
a “point of convergence”. Evolutionary
biologists use the word “Convergence” to describe unexpected similarities in
animals that are otherwise different (for example the octopus and the zebra) and
are anomalies in the model they are using to trace back common ancestry. And
convergence seems to be the norm for any individual who attempts to construct a
tree of life by using either similar body plans or similar genetic code⁶ as
there are many examples of this in addition to the eye.
In my mind a better explanation for the eye would be that
the same Being who made a world that was made up of space and filled with light,
gave many creatures eyes so that they could exist in and interact with this
world that He created (Psalm 94:9). The
fact that many animals, some of which are otherwise very different from one
another, possess eyes means that they – and consequently people as well – were
created to live in this place that He created.
But as I’ve said earlier this doesn’t necessarily mean that He couldn’t
have used a material process as a means of accomplishing this. And while I personally don’t think evolution is
a good explanation for this, I think it is very possible that Scripture talks
about the earth in ways that seem to present it as the “middle man” so to speak
in the creation of plant and animal life.
The Earth's Former Glory
It is a very interesting thing to consider that if you take
what God says literally on Days 3, 5 and 6 when He says “Let the earth bring
forth” plants, sea creatures, reptiles, winged creatures and land animals then
one could see the earth as a type of biological machine that God used to
generate these types of creatures.
Obviously, my use of the word “machine” is symbolic language to describe
something I have no way of understanding but nonetheless speculation abounds as
to what this could mean.
If understood in the context of an old earth where one
accepts the dates given by radiometric dating⁷ then one could see the
command where God tells the earth to bring forth plants on Day 3 and animals on
Days 5 and 6 as being fulfilled in the earth generating these creatures every
couple million earth years. In my mind
this would better fit what we understand of the fossil record than Darwinian
gradualism.
Obviously, this is a minimalist explanation in that it
basically just takes the evidence from the fossil record – that animal forms arise
abruptly with no apparent connection to prior ancestors – and just integrates
it with Genesis 1. It makes no attempt
to explain the natural mechanics of how the earth did this and even doesn’t
necessarily require that the earth in fact did it. One could see God creating every animal in a
direct supernatural way in segments of millions of earth years that parallels
the fossil record as well. It is more an
understanding of the possible explanations of Scripture and then taking the
evidence that we have from the fossil record and then logically reconciling
them together.
But in the midst of this mystery, we see an interesting
understanding of the earth that could see it as possessing incredible creative
power in its past to the point that it was able to create plants and animals at
the directives of God but that due to the sin of mankind has now become cursed
(Genesis 3:17, Romans 8:20-21) and is currently a sorry shell of its former
self. The earth as it was very well
could have brought about animals by piecing together their characteristics in a
random way. This is clearly speculation
on my part, but this is based on the fact that Adam named the animals after the
earth had brought them forth. This would
mean that God hadn’t named them. In
other words He didn’t say “Let tigers come forth” but rather had programmed the
earth with the necessary characteristics to give animals traits that would
allow them to interact with the world He created but that the earth itself
produced all manners of animal forms that Adam later had to name (Genesis
2:19).
Their vs Its
An even more in depth look at this would involve God telling
the earth to create certain “kinds” of animals.
Let the earth bring forth animals after their kind (Genesis 1:24). The footnote in my Bible says that the word
“their” for “their kind” is literally “its” for “its kind” but I suppose the translators
say either are possible interpretations of the verses because otherwise they
wouldn’t have written “their” in the first place. This then means that the earth could have
randomly produced animals based off of what God had initially seeded within it
or that the earth generated animals according to certain templates that God had
given it. It’s all theoretical but it is
an interesting thought to consider that the earth was imbedded with certain
templates that it used put together the different types of animals
somehow. I hope I’m not perceived by the
reader as ascribing some kind of independent consciousness to the earth, rather
I think that this would have had to have happened in some kind of mechanistic way
where like a computer that uses artificial intelligence is able to generate
certain things so the earth may have been programmed to do something similar.
Conversely the difference between “their” and “its” may seem
small and insignificant to us but it makes a world of difference when
considering how certain philosophical approaches may integrate with
Scripture. Platonism⁸ is
famous for its idea of there being perfect forms that serve as templates that the
material world is based off of. These
perfect ideas could find their biological expression in an interpretation that
sees the earth bring forth animals according to their kind. God had a perfect idea of cattle for instance
and programmed that template into the earth that then through some means produced
many variations of cattle.
Aristotle took the opposite approach by saying everything is
unique and should be evaluated on its own terms. And that classifications of organisms occur
when people observe similar characteristics in separate individuals and in
noticing those similarities create a name that can be used as a logical means for
grouping these individual units into a coherent whole. These names that we give for species, classes
and so on allow us to speak to commonalities and trends within the group as a
whole but are not indicative of transcendent pattern that they are modeled
after⁹. This school of thought would take kindly to
an interpretation that sees the earth bring forth animals according to its
kind¹⁰. Stating that while animals were brought forth
in a way that can afterwards be grouped into common species that it wasn’t done
according to some kind of perfect template¹¹.
But returning to the concept of how God created animals, while
it very well could be a material cause that brought about animals it’s very
possible that it is a type of material cause that is unknowable by us today
because the earth we live with now seems to be very diminished to what it once
was and as such taking the things we know about the earth today and then
applying them backwards to piece together the distant past is likely not a
reliable way of discovering this process.
And it again leads me to harp on another point that I don’t like about
evolution. Which is that it takes a
thoroughly harsh understanding of life – mainly that strength, power and
dominance were the factors that drove progress forward¹² – and presents that to us as
our understanding of origins. This led
to all manner of darkness in political and social ideology that was fleshed out
in the 20th century. And even
though most of social Darwinism has been repented of on a political level it
still remains a part of the collective consciousness of the modern world. This harsh, break-neck approach to life seems
to be what people embrace when they are trying to be “real” and “sober”. We make jokes about people who die from
foolish mistakes as it being “natural selection” or wish to let “natural
selection” take its course on people who do things that we think are
unwise. And forgive my soap box rant on
this but comments like these are why I feel it’s so important to be outspoken
in my critique of evolution. Even though
I believe that I can integrate an understanding of Darwinism with Scripture and
do so in a way that doesn’t compromise anything theologically I can’t bring
myself to take such a nihilistic, survivalist, selfish, me-and-mine against the
world approach to life. It is a dark pit
and one that I cannot embrace. And the
fact that it doesn’t show in the fossil record and can’t be made to make sense
through comparisons between similar animals is reason to reject it. And it is my earnest prayer that society one
day will reject this understanding of origins.
Lord I pray that love – the forgiving, compassionate,
selfless ethic found in the life and teachings of Jesus – would be the
formative narrative of our understanding of life. Let society depart from this dark view of
life that pits the strong against the weak.
By Your mercy renew society’s understanding of origins oh God. In Jesus’ Name.
¹This doesn’t mean that I think that animals should be treated cruelly. I love animals but even a dog lover like myself who has had many pets would never treat a person the same way we treat dogs.
²I am thankful that in our day atheists believe in human
rights. But while I am grateful that
this is the case, I must admit that I don’t see an adequate reason to believe
this in their philosophy. It seems that
they just simply state that this is true with no real explanation as to
“why”. Which again is better than saying
it’s not true but makes secular humanism a very fragile worldview because it is
not prepared to answer the question, should it ever be strongly posited, of why
humans are so valuable.
³For a full explanation see the post Let the Earth BringForth Animals
⁴Which is what mainstream science says is the time gap
between the Pre-Cambrian and the Cambrian I personally think that radiometric dating
is suspect, and I plan to write about that later. But my critique of dating systems in
unnecessary in my critique of evolution.
Even with millions of years it is still very unlikely.
⁵One can find much more about this in Stephen Meyer’s book Darwin’sDoubt. Another article about this can be found here:
⁶Stephen Meyers book Darwin’s Doubt also has many
examples of this
⁷I am suspicious of Radiometric dating figures but don’t
think my suspicion of this really changes anything. One can believe in an old earth and take
Genesis 1 literally or a young earth and take Genesis 1 literally.
⁸This is also called “Realism”
⁹This is called Nominalism
¹⁰Scripture states elsewhere that regardless of whether or
not the earth was imbued with templates for the creation of certain types of
animals that the idea of animals having unique “kinds” is a Biblical one – see Genesis
6:20. This may be a trivial definition
as it pertains to animals, but it is certainly an important one as it pertains
to humans.
¹¹If one believed in Theistic Evolution he would also take kindly
to “its” instead of “their”
¹²I don’t think there is any denying that these factors are
in play today but Scripture gives us the possibility that our origins came from
before the world had been corrupted by sin.
As such the earth’s creative power then may be very different compared
to what it is today and therefore the variables that we see driving nature
today may have been somewhat different during the 6 God Days of creation.
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