Four Views on Creation, Evolution, and Intelligent Design

Zondervan, James Stump, Stanley N. Gundry

• Publisher: Zondervan Academic
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780310080985
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion & Science

Evolution--or the broader topic of origins--has enormous relevance to how we understand the Christian faith and how we interpret Scripture.

Four Views on Creation, Evolution, and Intelligent Design presents the current "state of the conversation" about origins among evangelicals representing four key positions:

• Young Earth Creationism - Ken Ham (Answers in Genesis)
• Old Earth (Progressive) Creationism - Hugh Ross (Reasons to Believe)
• Evolutionary Creation - Deborah B. Haarsma (BioLogos)
• Intelligent Design - Stephen C. Meyer (The Discovery Institute)

The contributors offer their best defense of their position addressing questions such as:

• What is your position on origins - understood broadly to include the physical universe, life, and human beings in particular?
• What do you take to be the most persuasive arguments in defense of your position?
• How do you demarcate and correlate evidence about origins from current science and from divine revelation?
• What hinges on answering these questions correctly?

This book allows each contributor to not only present the case for his or her view, but also to critique and respond to the critiques of the other contributors, allowing you to compare their beliefs in an open forum setting to see where they overlap and where they differ.

CHAPTER ONE

YOUNG-EARTH CREATIONISM

KEN HAM

America, like the rest of the formerly “Christian West,” is experiencing a breath-taking and accelerating moral and spiritual meltdown that few would have predicted even ten years ago. Sexual liberty (probably never on the minds of the framers of the US Constitution) is threatening to destroy the religious liberty guaranteed in the First Amendment of the Constitution. Postmodern relativism, which is really another name for atheism, rules the culture: There is no absolute truth and no absolute morality.

Furthermore, the “nones” (those who profess no supposed religious affiliation) now approach 25 percent of the population.¹ Sixty to eighty percent of young people raised in Bible-believing homes and churches are leaving the church, and many are abandoning the faith, before or when they graduate from high school.² The Bible and Christianity have largely been thrown out of the government-run schools and universities. Christians are facing increasing persecution (loss of jobs, destruction of businesses, etc.) for not submitting to the LGBTQ revolution.

How has this happened in a nation whose founding and culture (until well into the twentieth century) were profoundly influenced by biblical Christianity like no other nation in history? I believe the answer is related to Psalm 11:3: “When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?”

The clear teaching and the most natural reading of Genesis 1–11, indeed the whole Bible, is that (1) God created the universe in six literal, approximately twenty-four-hour days about six thousand years ago; (2) He cursed the whole originally “very good” creation after and in response to Adam’s rebellion; (3) He destroyed the world with a year-long, global, catastrophic flood at the time of Noah; and (4) He judged mankind at the Tower of Babel, supernaturally dividing the people into different languages and thereby into different people groups. That is what the church almost universally believed for the first eighteen hundred years until the early nineteenth century, when most of the church accepted the idea of millions of years that was developing in geology which was then followed by Darwin’s theory in 1859.

Since The Genesis Flood (1961) by John Whitcomb and Henry Morris, a growing number of Christians, including PhD scientists, all over the world again believe this young-earth view to be biblically required and scientifically sound.³ But that biblical creation view has been under attack by secular scientists (and sadly, subtly by many professing Christian scientists) for over two hundred years. Genesis 1–11 is the foundation of the whole rest of the Bible. All major and minor doctrines—and the gospel itself—are founded directly or indirectly on those first eleven chapters. In the minds of many in the church, both young and old, the foundations have been destroyed.

For decades, most parents and churches have not taught general biblical or creation apologetics. Neither have most seminaries. If they teach apologetics, they generally ignore the question of origins. Churches have not given adults and children reasons for why they believe the Bible and the gospel so they could defend their faith in the face of skeptical challenges. Many kids raised within a young-earth creationist worldview were not taught how to defend that view biblically and scientifically and so were easily influenced by seemingly overwhelming scientific evidence presented by evolutionists in the schools, universities, and through the media. Through a national survey by America’s Research Group, we have documented that a major reason for the mass exodus of young people from the church is that the church had no answers to the claims of evolutionists, so young people concluded that the Bible is not trustworthy.⁴ In contrast, I have found as I have spoken in many churches, Christian schools, colleges, and in many nations over the past thirty-five plus years that kids who have been well taught in creationist apologetics have generally stood strong in that conviction.

For young-earth creationists that apologetic task begins with Scripture, for it is the inspired, inerrant Word of God. God teaches us to build our thinking on the solid rock of His Word (Matt 7:24–27). We are not to turn from it to the right or the left (Josh 1:8–9). We are to avoid being taken captive by the traditions and philosophies and speculations of men by clinging to the Word of Christ (2 Cor 10:3–4; Col 2:8). God’s creation speaks to us non-verbally about His existence and attributes (Rom 1:18–20; Pss 19:1; 97:6). But Scripture speaks to us verbally and truthfully about so much more. And as we shall see, creation is cursed, whereas Scripture (the written Word) is not. Without the biblical revelation about the cosmos-impacting fall of man, the creation gives a confusing message about the Creator.⁵ Therefore, we start our thinking about origins (as in all other areas) with Scripture, God’s inerrant, holy Word.

Biblical Evidence for Young-Earth Creation

Genesis 1–11 is history—not poetry, parable, prophetic vision, or mythology. This is seen in the Hebrew verb forms used in Genesis 1 and following, which are characteristic of historical narrative, not poetry.⁶ Genesis 1–11 has the same characteristics of historical narrative as Genesis 12–50, most of Exodus, much of Numbers, Joshua, 1 and 2 Kings, etc. The early chapters of Genesis name real people, describe real places, and discuss real events in real time. Also, the other biblical authors and Jesus treat Genesis 1–11 (using specific names like Adam, Eve, Noah) as literal history.⁷ Even many old-earth proponents recognize that Genesis 1–11 is historical narrative (i.e., describing in a straightforward manner real events in time-space history⁸), not poetry, myth, or some other kind of figurative kind of literature.⁹ What does that history teach us? Many Christians say, “Genesis 1 tells us that and why God created, not how and when He created.” Actually, the chapter does not tell us why God created but certainly does tell us a significant amount about when and how, as the following arguments demonstrate.

The Creation Days Were Literal

Young-earth creationists contend that the Bible is very clear that the days of the creation week in Genesis 1:1–2:3 are literal, twenty-four-hour days, just like our days today. Several lines of evidence support this conclusion. In my experience and reading, many Christians who say that it is not clear how long the days of creation were in Genesis 1 have overlooked some or much of this biblical evidence.

“Day” Is Defined Literally

The Hebrew word for day (yom) is defined in its two literal, normal senses the very first time it is used in the Bible (Gen 1:5): (1) the light portion of the dark-light cycle contrasted with night (laylah) and (2) the whole dark-light cycle. The days are numbered (first, second, third, etc.), and each is preceded by the refrain “and there was evening (‘ereb), and there was morning (boqer).” Every other place in the Old Testament where yom is modified by a number it always means a literal twenty-four-hour day.¹⁰ And every other use of laylah, ‘ereb, and boqer refers to a literal night or literal evening or literal morning, respectively, of a literal day. Also, Genesis 1:14 says that the heavenly bodies were created for man to measure literal years, literal seasons, and literal days (yamim, plural of yom).¹¹ That the days are sequential and non-overlapping is clear from the repeated phrases “and God saw” (7x), “it was so” (6x), and “it was good” (6x). The repetition is emphatic: God finished the work of one day before the next day commenced.

Furthermore, if God created over long ages of time (millions of years), there are various ways in Hebrew that He could have said that.¹² He could have used dor (translated as “time,” “period,” or “generation”). Or He could have used a phrase such as “after a long time” (Josh 23:1), or “thousands upon thousands” of years (cf. Gen 24:60), or “countless thousands” of years (cf. Num. 10:36), or “ages” (Joel 2:2). He could have borrowed a word from a neighboring language, as many languages do today and as God did with the Aramaic words zeman or ‘iddan (both translated “time” or “times”) in the books of Nehemiah and Daniel.¹³ Instead, God chose to use the only Hebrew word (yom) that means a literal twenty-four-hour day.

Exodus 20:8–11

This critical passage is God’s own commentary on Genesis 1. God tells the Israelites to work six days and rest on the seventh because He created in six days and ceased creating on the seventh. The commandment makes no sense if the days are not literal in verse 11 as they are in verses 8–10. If God wanted to say “you work six days because I created over six long periods of time,” He could have said that in Hebrew, as noted above.

Verse 11 verse stands as an insurmountable brick wall against any attempt to add millions of years into Genesis 1. They can’t be inserted into each of the days or between the days or before the days, for the verse says “in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them” (emphasis added). That means that the first day begins in Genesis 1:1 (when God created the earth), not in 1:3 (when He created light), and there was no time before verse 1.

The Order of Creation

Not only does the time period of creation in Genesis 1 contradict the time claimed for the evolution of all these things, but the order of creation events in Genesis 1 also contradicts the order of events in the evolutionary story of the universe and of life. For example, in Genesis the earth was created before light and the sun, moon and stars, whereas in evolutionary cosmology most stars were formed before the sun, which gave birth to the earth and moon. A global ocean preceded dry land in Genesis but in evolutionary geology the earth started as a molten ball, cooled and developed a dry crust, and then millions of years later seas formed. In Genesis we are told that all land plants were created before any sea creatures, and birds were created before any land animals, including what we today call dinosaurs (a modern name given to a particular group of land animals), all of which is the opposite order of evolution.¹⁴

Also, there are logical problems if we put millions of years into the days or between the days. How could plants survive without animals and insects to pollinate them? Why would God make creatures that lived and died, some kinds becoming extinct, for millions of years before He created man, whom He created to rule over all the other creatures He made (Gen 1:26–28)?

God Created Supernaturally

Ten times Genesis 1 records “and God said.” God created by His Word. He spoke and it was done. He created the first animate and inanimate things supernaturally and virtually instantly. On the day that they were created they were fully formed and fully functioning.¹⁵ For example, the first plants, animals, and people were created as mature adult forms (not as seeds or fertilized eggs or infants). The plants immediately had fruit on their branches and the animals and people were immediately ready to obey God’s command to be fruitful and multiply. These statements are clearly contrasted with how all the subsequent plants, animals, and people would come into existence: reproduction by natural procreation after their kinds. When God said, “Let there be . . .,” He did not need to wait millions of years for things to come into existence. He spoke, and creatures came into existence immediately. As Psalm 33:6–9 emphasizes, this applies to the heavenly bodies as well as all the creatures on earth. To postulate millions of years between these supernatural acts of creation seems very inconsistent with the wisdom and the power of God. Why would God create the earth and leave it covered with water for millions of years when He says He created it to be inhabited (Isa 45:18)? Why would He create plants and then wait millions of years before creating animals and people who would eat plants for food (Gen 1:29–30)? Why would He create sea creatures and birds and wait millions of years before creating land animals and people?

How God created is revealed in the earthly ministry of the Lord Jesus, who is the creative Word who became flesh (John 1:1–3, 14). He revealed His glory as the Creator in His very first miracle when He instantly and supernaturally turned water into wine (John 2:1–11). All subsequent miracles were likewise instantaneous results from His spoken word or His touch, not the result of natural processes. Genesis 1 records a week of miracles.

The Genesis Genealogies Are Strict Chronologies

Genesis reveals vital information for how long ago the creation week occurred. Genesis 5 and 11 give us the genealogies from Adam to Noah and Noah to Abraham. But unlike all other genealogies in the Bible and in ancient Near Eastern literature, those i...