4. CREATION: The Six Days Of Creation, Part 3

Day One Study

Read Genesis 1:1-23.

1. Reread Genesis 1:20-23 (fifth day) and Isaiah 45:18. God formed the earth to be inhabited. All the materials necessary for animal life—water, air, light, plants, and the chemical materials of the earth—were now available. With what did God fill the earth on Day 5?

2. What does the phrase “living creature” mean in Genesis 1:20, 21? Why aren’t plants called “living creatures?”

3. Regarding the water creatures: name the types represented by the descriptions given here. Note particularly the first ones created.

From the Hebrew: It is possible that these “sea monsters (NAS), great whales (KJV), great sea creatures (NIV, NET)” actually included the great marine dinosaurs. The word in the original Hebrew is actually the same word translated “dragons” in later Scriptures. Remember that the term “dinosaur” wasn’t even invented until the mid 1800’s.

4. The Hebrew term translated “winged bird” denotes anything that flies. Name the types of creatures represented by this phrase.

5. Current evolutionary theories say reptiles (land animals) evolved into birds. Notice the order of creation in v. 20-21. What is distinctively missing from the Genesis account that causes it to conflict with current theories?

Day Two Study

Read Genesis 1:24-31 (sixth and seventh days).

6. With what did God fill the earth on Day 6?

7. Regarding the land creatures: name the types represented by the descriptions given.

8. What was the grand climax of God’s creative activity (v. 26-31)? [Note: We will study this more fully in the next lesson.]

9. What instructions were given regarding food (v. 29-30)? To which creatures? What are the biological and ecological implications of this?

Read Genesis 1:31-2:4 middle.

10. In v. 31, how does God evaluate His creation?

11. Why isn’t it logical that disorder, decay, suffering or death could have occurred or could be occurring in God’s world as described in Genesis 1?

12. What occurred on the 7th day? Why?

Deeper Discoveries for those who like research: Discuss the astronomical basis of the day, month, and year in contrast to the lack of such basis for the week. Why is this important? Do all countries have a day of rest? Did any cultures in ancient history besides the Jews have a 7-day week?

Appreciation Application:

13. God created a well-ordered, functioning world for man to enjoy.

a. According to Romans 1:20-25, what should be our response to God’s self-revelation in the created world?

b. What are the consequences for refusing to recognize God as Creator?

Day Three Study

Appreciation Assignment:

14. Read Exodus 20:11. Did God create man with a need for rest and relaxation from work? Have you stopped to rest for at least part of a day this past week? What did you do to rest?

15. Spend some time thinking about various animals. Perhaps visit the zoo or local pet shop with your family. Read Job 38:39-39:30 as God tells about the specialness of some He created. What are your favorite animals and why? Share with your group.

Deeper Discoveries:

·         Read “Creation Answers: Creation, Not Evolution” following this lesson.

·         Go to www.answersingenesis.org. SEARCH a word or phrase from today’s passage—dinosaurs, animals, ecology, eating plants, etc. Select an article to read or video to watch. Also visit www.icr.org and search.

Creation Answers: Creation, Not Evolution

“It’s All about Information”

The information below is adapted from resources found on www.icr.org and www.answersingenesis.org.

Let’s explore some of the other questions always asked about creation in Genesis 1 plus those that should be asked. Then, we’ll narrow our focus down to evolution itself.

What God Said He Did

When God first began His creating, the earth was described as “formless and empty.” Formless just means it needed shape. It was covered with water, the deep. Empty means just that, unfilled. God spends 2 1/2 days separating & gathering to give the earth form (1:3-10). God spends 3 1/2 days making & filling to remove the emptiness.

Some say a great span of time existed between Gen 1:1 and 1:2, allowing for an earlier time when the earth appeared somewhat like it is now, was destroyed because of Satan’s rebellion, and then was restored to the way it appears now. This is supposed to explain an old age for the earth plus layers of rocks & fossils but without evolution. The problem with this position is that any catastrophe that left the earth shapeless and empty would have destroyed anything as orderly as the continuous rock layers. So, it’s no longer considered a credible alternative to young earth creation.

What Is Separated And Gathered? What’s The Expected Evidence? What Do We Find?

·         Day One—God created light so it is not Himself. He divided the light from the darkness; also, He refers to day and night and evening and morning. Because God is eternal, this also indicates the creation of time for the benefit of His creation. We are not told the source of the light if other than God Himself. God established a regular rotation of the earth. Expect to find evidence of day and night being continual and universal. This is what we find.

·         Day Two—The waters above from waters below with an expanse in between, a curious phrase. Many think this ‘expanse’ was the atmosphere, because God placed the birds in the expanse to fly. This would put these waters above the atmosphere. Perhaps more water vapor in the atmosphere than at present. Expect evidence of worldwide tropical climate forming a greenhouse effect, lush vegetation, greater size and longevity of creatures due to shielding from incoming radiation. We do find tropical plants and animals all over the globe in every rock layer, at the poles and on top of the highest mountains including giant animals and plants. Humans living before the Flood lived ~900 years. We’ll cover this in a future article.

·         Day Three—Dry land separated from the sea. From the text, it appears that the land was all in one land mass. This doesn’t preclude having rivers and lakes on the land, though, as described in Genesis 2. You would expect evidence of one large landmass with set boundaries between the ocean and the land. We find evidence of a supercontinent that has since split apart. Continental shelves and slopes are set boundaries between the ocean and the land.

What Is Made And Filled? What’s The Expected Evidence? What Do We Find?

·         Day 3—ALL plant kinds—grasses, seed plants, fruit trees. Food for creatures filled the land surface that day. We would expect to find evidence of fully formed and functioning plants, fruit and seeds from the start of life on earth. We find just that. Pollen is found in some of the oldest rocks supposedly millions of years older than the first pollen-forming plants.

Are plants alive? The Bible makes a sharp distinction between plants & animals. On Day Three, God commanded the inanimate earth to “bring forth” plants while on Day Five, He “created...every living creature that moved.” At this point, and on Day Six to follow, He instituted the concept of giving “life” (Hebrew nephesh) to nonliving matter—something He did not do for plants. The Bible never refers to plants as living; they grow, flourish, wither, fade but they do not “live” or “die.” Plants do not have nephesh, nor “breath of life” nor “blood” (Lev. 17:11). They are biologically alive but not Biblically “living.”

·         Day 4—Sun, moon, stars—notice the emphasis on separating light and darkness. Light filled the expanse that day. We would expect to find evidence that these were fully functioning in a mature state from the beginning. We find fully functioning from the beginning. Actually, the creation of light before the sun is evidence of authenticity of Genesis 1. Only an eyewitness would dare to write that.

·         Day 5—ALL water creatures, ALL birds. Creatures filled the seas and sky that day.

·         Day 6—ALL land creatures plus MAN and WOMAN. Creatures filled the land surface that day. Regarding days 5 and 6, expect to find evidence of all water creatures, birds, land creatures and man to be fully functioning in a mature form since the beginning. That’s what we find. More on that later.

Note: the creation order contradicts the proposed evolution of the universe and life on the planet at >20 points. Example: Marine creatures weren’t created until day 5, but evolution says that they came before the land plants. Seed plants didn’t “evolve” until after bacteria, invertebrates, fish, amphibians and some land animals, but creation says they came first. Bees “evolved” before flowers. You have to twist Genesis 1 to make it match up to evolution.

Creation Is Complete.

God told us how long creation took and how complete it was. God rested because He was finished. Nothing formless or empty remained. The biblical model reveals a fully functioning, mature creation:

·         Continents with topsoil and rivers flowing from a source of water.

·         Rocks with crystalline minerals in them—some already beginning the radioactive process to add warmth and other elements to our planet.

·         Stars visible from earth.

·         Plants bearing seed and fruit; bees pollinating flowers.

·         Marine animals swimming; birds flying.

·         Land animals creeping and running; adult Adam and Eve talking—all capable of reproducing.

What About Life? Did It Evolve Or Was It Instantly Created?

·         Defining Creation—”Creation” is defined simply as the work of God in bringing all things into existence ex nihilo (out of nothing) and is not merely a reworking of materials already in existence.

·         Defining Evolution—”Evolution” is the supposition that life spontaneously came into existence from previously nonliving chemical molecules and forms of life have developed from earlier, simpler forms by gradual modification through natural processes. This is what I am talking about when I say evolution. Particles to people. Amoeba to man. New information being added continually into the DNA of living creatures.

It’s all about information. Is this operational science or historical science? Examining biological life in the present is operational. Making conclusions about the prehistoric past is historical. Evolution is a worldview about the past and a way to interpret scientific data that exists in the present. Let’s look at the evidence from two sources: 1) life in the present and 2) life in the past.

Life In The Present

What Evidence From Life In The Present Would You Expect To Find If Evolution Is True?

·         Life coming from non-life. This is the biggest problem for evolutionists. Like the nothing creating something concept. No one has ever produced life from non-life in a laboratory. It’s not occurring spontaneously anywhere on the planet, either.

·         Beneficial Mutations that continually create new systems in every living creature observable in the present. Producing…

·         Billions of transitional Forms—a hypothetical organism that is “between” evolutionary stages. We should have transitional structures for every part of every system of every living creature in the present.

·         Things Getting Better—no death due to aging or disease

What Evidence From Life In The Present Would You Expect To Find If Creation Is True?

·         Intelligent design in all living things

·         Separate, distinct kinds of creatures with lots of variation within them.

·         Death and disease because of the curse.

·         Extinction of some creatures because of the flood.

What Evidence From Life In The Present Do You Find?

1. Intellligent Design In All Living Things Is Obvious.

Every time a student looks through a microscope or a telescope or looks at the real world in any way, he/she is bombarded with evidence for creation. Even the simplest single-celled organism is unthinkably complex. A virus, which isn’t even complete in itself, can baffle our best scientists and all our technology!

All of life is governed by the marvelously complex genetic code, which contains not only design and order, but what is equivalent to written information. This DNA code must not only be written correctly, the rest of the cell must read it and follow its instructions to live and reproduce. This code had to be present at the origin of life. How could it have written itself, and how could all the various parts of the cell learn how to read and obey it? IMPOSSIBLE!

A non-Christian, non-evolutionist scientist says, “The complexity of the simplest known type of cell is so great that it is impossible to accept that such an object could have been thrown together by some kind of freakish, vastly improbable event. Such an occurrence would be indistinguishable from a miracle.” (Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, p. 264)

Similarity is evidence of common designer, not common ancestry. You would expect single Creator using common design for similar function.

2. Separate, Distinct Kinds Are Evident; Transitional Forms Are Non-Existent.

For amoeba-to-man evolution to be possible there has to be a mechanism that adds new genetic information to the DNA recipe of cells—information that performs a new function that was not previously present. No such mechanism is known. The proposed mechanism is through a series of mutations that add new information to the DNA. Upward progress is made because of natural selection.

“Natural selection” means that the creature with the right stuff will: 1) have the best chance of surviving a given habitat, 2) beat out those who don’t have the right stuff, and 3) pass on their winning stuff to their offspring. According to evolution, the right stuff is beneficial mutations.

“Beneficial” Mutations ≠ Evolution

Mutations are inherited copying errors in the DNA ‘recipe’ of an organism. Evolutionary theory requires some mutations to go “uphill”—to add new information. The mutations we observe are either neutral (information not effectively changed) or go “downhill”—the parent genetic information is lost or scrambled.

In rare cases, a mutation may benefit a creature in a particular environment. It looks beneficial, but in every case these involve loss of information, even though it appears to give the organism a survival advantage. That’s where natural selection of creatures with the right stuff takes place.

·         Example #1: Wingless beetles. A mutation prevents some beetles from growing wings. This defect is passed to all that beetle’s babies, so that it’s grandchildren will all be wingless. Here in Double Oak, such a beetle will have less chance to get away from beetle-eaters, so it’ll be eaten before it can leave babies. Fewer wingless beetles. But, on Galveston Island, the flying beetles tend to get blown into the sea, so the wingless ones have an advantage. More wingless beetles. Not gain of information. Loss of information. Those wingless beetles cannot produce beetles with wings again. It’s all about information.

·         Example #2: Blind cave animals. Many animals in caves are blind, with shriveled eyes caused by a mutation. That would not harm the individual in the cave with no light to see by anyway. But in the light, such blind mutants would never survive to have babies. Result: more blind creatures in caves; more sighted creatures outside. Not gain of information. Loss of information. Those blind creatures can never produce sighted babies again. It’s all about information.

·         Example #3: A common mutational defect carried by about one in 100 Europeans may help to protect against certain forms of AIDS. HIV gets into certain immune cells with the help of two receptor molecules, like ‘handholds’ on the outside of the cells. Researchers have found a mutated form of the gene that codes for one of these receptor proteins on these cells. The protein has lost the chemical ‘handles’ which the virus needs to get inside the cell. Beneficial against AIDS but what else should that protein provide for the cell? Loss of information. It’s all about information.

If evolution were true, we should find billions of transitional forms representing the progression from one creature to another in the present. Besides mutations, the examples commonly cited as “evolution happening today” usually involve variation or adaptation coupled with natural selection. Let’s look at these more closely.

Variation Within A Kind ≠ Evolution

God created plants to produce seed ‘after their kind’ and animals to reproduce ‘after their kind’. ‘After their/its kind’ is repeated ten times in Genesis 1, giving emphasis to the principle. And we take it for granted. When we plant a tomato seed, we don’t expect to see a geranium pop up out of the ground. Nor do we expect that our dog will give birth to kittens or that Aunt Betty, who is expecting, will bring home a chimpanzee baby from the hospital! Our everyday experience confirms the truth of the Bible that things produce offspring true to their kind.

But what is a created ‘kind’? God divided creatures up differently than we humans do. Linnaeus, a creationist scientist, tried to determine the created kinds so he defined a ‘species’ as a group of organisms that could interbreed among themselves, but not with another group, akin to the Genesis concept. We have since learned that the “species” division is too limiting. Should be much larger. New species have been observed to form. But this speciation is within the “kind,” and involves no new genetic information. In nature, we see variety within a species or “kind” such as the dog kind but no changes from one species to another—dogs are not changing to cat kinds so they can climb the tree after the squirrels. That would be plenty of motivation, wouldn’t it?

God placed within the DNA of creatures potential for variety in certain parts of the creature. Everyone gets 2 sets of genes—1 from mom, 1 from dad. So, lots of potential for variation in hair color, eye color, skin color. But, there are limits on natural genetic variability. Humans will always have hair rather than fur and two eyes rather than 10. Noses can change shapes but gills are never substituted for noses. Okay? Limited variety is present within every type of creature. There is variation in dogs, but they are still dogs; variation in cats, but they are cats; variation in humans, but we are still humans—and so on. Any variation we see today involves sorting and the loss of pre-existing information.

·         Example #1: An example of forced loss of information. Similar to dog breeding (unnatural selection) —Choose the animals with the characteristics wanted then breed them. Thus the information for certain desired characteristics is concentrated in smaller selected populations. But the resulting breeds have lost the information for the characteristics not wanted. A Chihuahua has lost the information in its genes to give it the long legs and body of a Great Dane. Less information. It’s all about information.

·         Example #2: Geographical populations—People who have lived in an isolated area for generations will eventually carry the same traits. Other traits will be lost.

·         Example #3: Finches on the Galapagos Islands— In the 1800’s, Darwin saw big finches & little finches with big beaks & little beaks. Today, there are still big finches & little finches with big beaks & little beaks. In our group, you see big & little women with big & little beaks. Variation, not evolution!

·         Example #4: England’s peppered moths—Before 1800, light and dark moths existed. Once pollution darkened the environment, light and dark moths existed. Today, light and dark moths exist. Throughout the entire observed period, both shades existed and comprised a single interbreeding species. No evolution here! Just the ratios changed. Variation within their own kind according to the wide variety of color combinations programmed into them by the Creator.

Natural selection assists in selecting optimal habitats and enables the best genetic information to be passed on. The trait must be there before it can be selected! It’s all about information!

Adaptation Of A Species ≠ Evolution.

Here’s another thing confused with evolution. Adaptation. Adaptation is a design feature in a plant or animal that makes it more suited to live in its environment by using pre-existing information to make the necessary adaptations to an environment. The trait must be there before it can be selected! There’s a great discussion of this issue in Chapter 22 of the book.

·         Example #1: Northerners moving down south and vice versa—If you change your elevation from sea level to mountaintop or warm climate to cold climate, your body will produce more red blood cells to fuel your “engine” with oxygen and warmth. Adaptation with already existing ability. It’s all about information.

·         Example #2: Antibiotic resistant bacteria—Some antibiotic resistance was already present in the bacterial population before the development of antibiotics (represented in blue). Antibiotics kill off more of the non-resistant red ones, so more of the blue are left to flourish and have bacteria babies. Bacteria found in the frozen bodies of explorers who had been lost over 150 years ago were already resistant to 6 different antibiotics that weren’t invented until 100 years later! Of the many cases of antibiotic resistance studied, none have involved the production of new functionally complex information, such as a new enzyme. Nothing new is produced. Bacteria can gain resistance through two ways: 1) by losing genetic information, 2) by using a design feature built in to swap DNA with another bacteria.

·         Example #3: Insect resistance to pesticides— Evolutionist Francisco Ayala determined that houseflies resistant to DDT already carried the genetic information necessary to “be” resistant, not “become” resistant.

Which reminds me that things are not getting better. Creatures get sick, get old and die. Any evolutionary process that goes from amoeba to man would have solved this eons ago. It’s illogical to think otherwise. The bottom-line is this: evolution is not being observed in the present.

·         Not through mutations, variation or adaptation.

·         Not through pregnancy, either. A baby growing in the womb never has gill slits like a fish or a tail like a monkey.

·         Parts of our bodies aren’t useless leftovers of our evolutionary ancestors. Those identified as such last century are now declared useful to the body in some way. Tonsils fight infection. The appendix activates the immune system before birth. If one of these parts “goes bad,” it may need to be removed, but this doesn’t prove they were “useless organs” any more than a necessary hysterectomy proves the womb is useless!!

Living Things That Defy Evolution

There are hundreds of living creatures that have systems so marvelously complex and symbiotic that they could not work until all parts work. These totally defy explanation by evolution. The butterfly, giraffe, bombardier beetle, and woodpecker are just a few.

Conclusion

God created all plants, animals, and man according to kinds with lots of room for variation and adaptation within kinds. Each was subsequently affected by the curse.

THERE IS A CREATOR!!

Sources For Further Study:

1. Living fossils Q & A: www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/living_fossils.asp

2. Creation kinds Q & A: www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/kinds.asp

3. Videos: Incredible Creatures that Defy Evolution, Vol. 1 and 2, by Dr. Jobe Martin; Living Fossils by Dr Joachim Scheven.

4. Refuting Evolution, Vol. 1 and 2 by Jonathan Sarfati. One particular chapter examines fossils used to prove evolution at www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/re2/chapter8.asp

5. Creation: Facts of Life, Gary Parker is completely online at http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/cfol/index.asp.