Apologetics Session 37- Origins and Evolution - Part 4

Recap of Previous Sessions and the Case for a Designer

The blessings that you've given us Lord. I just ask that you would bless this time tonight that you would you know as we as we look over your word and what you did at the beginning of times in your creation Lord.

I just pray that everyone would be edified by the teaching that you would allow us to see things through your word God. We thank you so much for the sacrifice of your son on the cross for our salvation.

We pray all these things in Christ's name. Amen. All righty so by way of recap we've actually gone through a number of topics. This is I guess the fourth session. So we've gone through the creation of the universe, the Big Bang, a lot of the fine-tuning and cosmological arguments.

We've gone through a lot of the evolutionary data so going through transitional forms and the really the lack of evidence for those transitional forms are sort of the extrapolation of that. And then we went really deep into the human genome, the biological nanomachines that are in our our bodies.

A lot of videos that we walked through to kind of help elucidate the topic and kind of because it's hard to sort of describe these things and grasp them. And then into DNA and just a massive amount of digital code that's essentially in our bodies that you know dictate you know how our cells function and do things like repair and you know cell division and we focused in on cell division and copying and transcribing of DNA.

A lot of really interesting kind of stuff there. We're gonna kind of pull back from a lot of that because I think we've done you know I mean there's certainly we could go a lot deeper but we've done a lot to sort of talk about why it is reasonable and not only reasonable but probably the best explanation for both the creation of the universe and the creation of life in our universe to you know posit that there's a designer, an engineer, a transcendent and all-powerful being that actually created both the universe and life on our planet.

Why Christians Disagree About Creation Views

Now we're going to kind of go into a bit of a I'll call it inside baseball topic where we're going to talk about some of the different views of creation and I want to kind of start off by but with a disclaimer.

This is very similar to the eschatological disclaimer that I gave around eschatology where some of these views I'll say are better than others but but you know I don't want to think that these are issues that we should necessarily divide over.

I think some of them have stronger indications towards doctrine than others do but this is something that I believe my personal opinion is that there are Christians that probably hold to almost all of these views if not all of these views and that we really need to separate our soteriology from from our belief around you know around creation.

I think that there's a right view obviously I think there's a right view about this and I think that some views have much much larger hurdles to overcome and and you know it's really kind of on the folks that want to hold to those views to attempt to overcome those hurdles.

We'll talk a little bit about the specifics of that I just kind of wanted to start out with sort of a disclaimer and we'll talk about the specifics. That doesn't mean that this isn't an important issue or important topic it certainly is one it has it certainly has implications on things like soteriology and some of the other doctrines that we've discussed and and we'll talk more about that as well.

The reason I say this is because God you know Jesus said what what must I do to be saved and and the you know when people asked him what must I do to be saved he said we must believe in me go to seminary become a theological expert and then you'll be saved and that's kind of what you know I'm trying to get at which is that there are people that are saved that just don't have a deep understanding of doctrinal issues so we need to be careful about condemning someone who may just be uninformed or maybe hasn't thought about it you know very deeply and I do think that we should hold teachers to a higher standard who may be teaching who may be teaching some of these views because they have done the due diligence they have done the research they have done the studying they have gone to seminary they've they've been educated on this stuff so you said some shall incur stricter judgment right.

Absolutely so with that large and long disclaimer we're going to talk about essentially three major views one being the old earth one being the young earth and one being theistic evolution and with theistic evolution we're going to go kind of into two variants so the way and there are videos that are linked in the and I'll send it out after tonight's session I'll send out the actual Word document that has all of this stuff including the references to all the videos that we've gone through and some videos that we have not there are videos by respected theologians who who talk about some of these other views and hold different views to probably most Christians but you know and so you guys can watch those at your leisure but and I'll talk a little bit about some of the.

Things that they said in those in those videos. Yeah just a comment. Having three major views of creation and so forth it is. I think it's important for us to realize we can't be too dogmatic about any one have to be open but cautiously.

So and I'm going to be open about my particular feeling on these views and kind of where I stand on them as well you know and and you know just so that you guys are all you know we'll be up front about it but I I think that the important thing though about any of these views is that we essentially lean on God's Word and what it says now.

God's Word can be interpreted multiple ways but I find that some people try to take a particular you really have to look at the motivations of people. Some people want to let the Word of God speak to them and others want to read into God's Word something that they already believe or something that they want to believe and so in some in some of these views and I'm kind of dancing around a little bit here but in some of these views I think it is people trying to read in science in particular into into God's Word.

And God's Word is not a scientific document right. It isn't. It is an inspired scripture. And so I think that some of these views are harder to justify and people kind of read in read in what they want to to do.

But I do understand that it is also something that people get very passionate about some people get very passionate about their particular viewpoint they want to push it over others and I think that we need to be gracious to folks all.

Right. So what I wanted to do is is really just start with God's Word right. Start with the actual Genesis account. So I only have one slide for today. No videos today. I know you guys love the videos but I wanted to go through really start with God's Word and go through the actual Genesis account Genesis 1 and 2 and kind of start there and just lay out the six days.

The Six Days of Creation in Genesis 1

So at the very beginning of the Bible we have Genesis 1 1 where it says in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and the earth was without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

So that's the introduction statement and actually leads in and we'll talk more about that statement in a bit leads into something called gap theory which we'll get into in a bit talking about the age of the earth and the universe.

That's the introduction. And then when we get to the first day which is Genesis 1 3 through 5 it says and God said let there be light and there was light and God saw the light saw that the light was good and God separated the light from the darkness.

God called the light day in the darkness he called night and there was evening and there was morning the first day. So that's day one right of creation. Then we move on to day two where God separates the waters from the same as in Genesis 1 6 through 8 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 that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse.

And it was so and God called the expanse heaven and there was evening and there was morning the second day. So that's day two. Day three is where God separates the earth from the sea and creates vegetation.

So this is Genesis 1 9 through 13. And God said let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place and let the dry land appear. And it was. And it was so God called the dry land earth and the waters that were gathered together he called seas and God saw that it was good.

And God said let the earth's vegetation plants yielding seed and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed each according to its kind on the earth. And it was so the earth brought forth vegetation plants yielding seed according to their own kinds and trees bearing fruit in which their seed it in which is their seed each according to its kind.

And God saw that it was good. And there was evening. And there was morning the third day. So that's day three day for God creates the sun moon and stars. So this is a 14 through 19. And God said let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from night and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years and let them be and let them be lights in the expanse of of the heavens to give light upon the earth.

And it was so 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 and God's. And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on earth to rule over the day and over the night and to separate the light from the darkness.

And God saw that it was good. And there was evening. And there's morning the fourth day. So then we get on to the fifth day which is God creating the sea creatures birds. And it says in this is 22 23.

And God said let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures and let the birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens. So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves with which the water swarm according to their kinds and every winged bird according to its kind.

And God saw that it was good and God blessed them saying be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas and let birds multiply on the earth. And there was evening and there was morning the fifth day.

Now we finally get to day six. Day six is where God creates land creatures humanity and gives vegetation for food 24 to 31 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 and God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind and God saw that it was good.

Then God said let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth so God created man in his own image in the image of God he created him male and female he created them and God blessed them and God said to them be fruitful and multiply fill the earth and subdue it then have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth and God said behold I've given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit, you shall have them for food.

And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the heavens, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has breath of life, I have given every green plant for food. And it was so.

And God saw everything that he had made. And behold, it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning, a sixth day.". And then lastly we get to Genesis 2, 1 through 3, which is the seventh day God rests from his work of creation.

And so 2, 1 says, "...thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.".

So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. So that is the seven-day creation story, and we have a few different views that people who read this passage take.

Obviously non-Christians don't believe any of it. Non-Christians who don't believe in God's Word and don't believe that it has any inspiration or any authority on earth believe that this is just a storybook.

We're going to ignore those. We're going to talk about what Christians believe about this. I think that we've done a pretty good job over the last few sessions of looking at what non-Christians and naturalists believe and kind of, you know, deconstructing some of that.

And I think that the fact that many atheists and naturalists presuppose that supernatural, that a supernatural being and that supernatural circumstances to the creation of the world and of life, they sort of presuppose that that is impossible, is a major reason why they're essentially reading in their own beliefs into the creation of the world.

And so we'll look at some of the things that Christians hold. So there's probably the most popular view that Christians hold, which is a young earth creationism view. And it's an easy explanation as to why they believe this, right?

It's probably the most commonly held belief. One strong proponent of this view is Ken Ham. I'm sure you guys have all heard of Ken Ham, Creation Museum, Bible Museum, ARC. Answers in Genesis. Yeah, Answers in Genesis, yes.

And he's a huge proponent and a major debater of young earth creationism, as well as other things about the ARC and dinosaurs, you know, living with humans and so forth. And this view holds that the earth is roughly 6 ,000 years old.

It can go as much as 10 ,000, but it's generally between the 6 ,000 and 10 ,000 year mark, right? You can vary a little bit there, but generally speaking, 6 ,000 years old. A lot of this is based off of the lineages in the Bible going back to Adam.

And it holds that the seven days of creation were literal 24-hour days and not longer periods of time. So the arguments for this view are really straightforward. You know, it says, you know, we just read the entire creation account and since the Bible is the Word of God and it says days, the view here is that you should take that to mean days, right?

It's the word yom in Hebrew. I'm sure I'm mispronouncing it. And so people that hold to this view would, if you remember the, and actually this Sunday, believe it or not, it's funny how things, how God works to have things come up.

But if you remember when I taught on a lot of the historicity of the Bible, we talked about something called textual criticism, which is, you know, a science that, about reading texts and determining, you know, their meaning.

And Pastor, this past week, also talked about textual criticism when he talked about the passage in John that had, that there was discrepancies about whether or not, whether or not it was written by John or added later on.

Not whether or not it was an accurate account of particular events that happened, but whether or not it was actually written by John. That was really the argument. But, you know, one who holds to the young earth creationism view would utilize a lot of the same tactics as a textual critic would, by looking at the the word day or yom and interpreting it to mean a day.

And how we interpret a day to be today, which is that is a 24-hour period of time. Part of it, I mean, if you go to the equator, you've got 12 hours a day, 12 hours a night, so, you know, half hour, a half a day period of time.

So arguments against this view would lean on, I'm gonna say the word facts of science, we'll just leave it there, but I'm gonna say facts of science, mainly geology, which dates the earth to a much older, much older date.

It would also look at things like the speed of light, which is something that we that we know, and the distance of either stars to the earth, right? And how many, how long it would take for light from those stars to travel to be visible by our eyes.

So in my life, growing up, I've always held to the young earth creationism view. It just seemed to make the most sense to me that you read the Bible the way you read the Bible, and that it means what it means.

And I will say, though, that I'm not entirely dogmatic about it, and to your point, we probably ought not to be too dogmatic about views unless they are, you know, really heretical views. Yeah. The one thing you're doing is, is you're.

Taking it literally. Correct. Word for word here. Correct. And it's interesting, when we went through biblical archaeology before, and there were actually stories of creation, very similar to the stories of the flood you talked about before, there were also creation stories from the Babylonians, and the Sumerians, and some other cultures.

Yeah. And those cultures, when they described creation, it was very poetic language, it was very full of hyperbole, it was very mystical. Yes. But it's very interesting, in God's word, in the creation account, it's very short, it's very straightforward.

And some people would claim that it's poetic, and it's.

All symbology, but it's not written that way. Right. When we talk about some of the other views, we're going to talk about some of the genres of literature that they want to assign to parts of Genesis.

Not all of Genesis, but parts of Genesis. So yes, you're 100 right. Young Earth creationism, which is a view I've held growing up, and probably am still in favor of, is the view that you take Genesis 1 and 2 literally.

It does, the arguments against the, you know, things like the speed of light, which is, you know, it's something that we can measure, and the fact that the distance of stars, and the amount of time it would take the light from those stars to travel to our eyes, is something that would account against this view.

Similarly, the age of the earth, the geological age of the earth, you know, looking at certain minerals and things and being able to gauge their age, right, puts the earth at, I believe, it's like 4 .6 billion years old, and then looking at things like the speed of light, you know, it's putting, if you rewind time, that's how they get to the 13, remember when we talked in the first session about the 13 .4 billion year age of the universe?

That was basically rewinding the clock, based on how far away things are now, rewinding the clock of the observable universe back to a zero point, right? Taking into account things like the speed of light, right?

And so all of these things will be points against it. Now, I personally had always thought, and an example that I've always used is, did God create Adam and Eve as babies? He didn't, right? So if you, let's say that you materialized into the universe, in the Garden of Eden, and you saw Adam and Eve, with all of the scientific knowledge that we have today, what would your assumption about Adam and Eve be?

Adults. But they were full-grown adults, but your assumption would be, knowing how full-grown adults become full-grown adults, that they were born at some point, that they were infants, that they grew up, that they became teenagers, and then ultimately became adults, right?

But you would be wrong, right? Because that's not what the Bible says. The Bible says that God created Adam from the dust of the earth, and he created Eve from Adam's rib, right? And so, essentially, they were created with what I've termed implied age, right?

There was an implied, there was implied maturity, right? An implied growth that was there, but they had never been babies. They were not born. They were created as full-grown adults. No bellybuttons.

No bellybuttons, yes. Good point. But, if God can do that with a human being, probably if, you know, one of, if not the most complex creation, right? Couldn't he do that with a tree? Couldn't he do that with the rocks?

Couldn't he do that with a mountain, right? Couldn't he, like, one of the other things is, if God created a full-grown tree and you cut the tree down, would there be growth rings, right, inside it? And so, an all-powerful God, this is not actually a hard problem to solve, right?

He can create, he can create a universe as big as he wants. He can pre, pre-stream the light, right, across the universe. He can create it with this sort of implication of age. Go ahead. Well, like when Jesus fed the 5 ,000,.

He fed the people from fish that had never swam in the ocean and, yes, bread.

That has never grown from wheat. Right. So, so I find, I find, I find the whole, the sort of naturalistic arguments against the seven-day creation, essentially, they fall over because if you believe in creation at all, then you believe in an all-powerful God and, therefore, an all-powerful God, this is not actually a problem.

It's the same type of argument that I've heard people say, you know, if God created the universe and we're the only life in it, this is a sci-fi argument, then why did God go through all the trouble of creating those stars and planets?

The answer is, what trouble? What trouble? Because, at the end of the day, this was not a difficult problem for God to solve, right? So, I, I don't find those arguments particularly persuasive. Go ahead, Rob.

No, I was just wondering, do you also, I'm.

Assuming, considering that the earth was perfect at that time and a curse came.

Upon the lower earth, like that? Right. Go ahead, Bob. I'm looking at slides one and four. Yeah. And I, yes, I don't quite understand slide one. I know. We've looked, I've looked at Genesis many times and I just, my finite mind just doesn't comprehend it.

Yes. Because then, in slide four, he creates the sun and the moon.

Correct. So, I can't see what... This is an argument for a different view that we're going to get to, which is an old earth creationism view. Well, if I can continue,.

Then I see slides one, two, and three, I could say, in my mind, they could be old creation view. And when God created the sun and the moon to be for calendars and days and times like that, that's when the young earth comes into play.

I mean, I, I.

Just don't get it. Yeah. And that's okay because it's God. It's okay. This is not a problem. So, one of the arguments is that the light that was created, uh, in slide one or in, uh, the first day, um, was not the light of our sun, our star.

It was a.

Different light that God created. Well, it does, and does it say that he actually created it or that he just separated it? He said, let there be light. Okay. He.

Separated the light from the darkness. Okay. Yes. Um, but he didn't create our sun, our moon, until the fourth day of creation. Right. Um, and then said that we should use those to Mark days and seasons.

And this is actually an argument for what they call the day age view, which is the older view that I'm highlighting, which is that these were not 24 hour days, but we're actually periods of time, which we'll get to in a second.

But just to finish off here, um, you know, I'm not, I'm not persuaded by the arguments of, um, of age of earth or speed of light or any of the sort of the physical, uh, issues, um, that, that people have or scientific issues that people have, um, with the 24 hour day or young earth creation, uh, creation view.

Did you want to say something? Oh, okay. I thought maybe I'm worried about your hour of time. So then we're going to get, we're going to move on to older creationism and this gets into a bit of, uh, what you were talking about.

And this is actually held by folks like, uh, Stephen Meyer, who we saw talking about DNA last time. It's also held by Dr. John Lennox. Um, who's another, um, uh, debater and, and, uh, uh, scientist and theologian, you Ross, you Ross, you Ross.

And an example of this is something called the day age, which, which is to say that the age of the earth, the age of the universe, um, could still be 13 .4 billion and 4 .6 billion years old respectively.

And the creation story could still hold. Um, it really triggers off the word day or yom, uh, and there's some actual arguments I don't quite get about the grammar in Hebrew, uh, around, um, the, the difference between how day is represented for the first four days and how it's represented for the fifth and sixth day.

Um, there's some grammar around, um, around that, which there's a video link that has Dr. Lennox explaining this, which he does a better job than I could. I didn't quite understand it, but, um, but nevertheless it is represented grammatically differently.

Although the word day itself is, uh, is used. Um, and what this holds the day age view, it's a bit of gap theory plus day age. So what that means is that that first, if you remember before day one, there was, um, there was, uh, you know, sort of a, an introduction says in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

The earth was without, without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Um, and then he goes into and God said, let there be light and went through the first day.

Now some people include that first introduction in day one and some people don't. Some people say that's a gap. There's a gap of time that could be when God created the actual universe, right? So he creates the universe, you know, what is it?

A 9 billion years goes by or 8 billion years goes by and then he starts creating the earth, right? And that all of these other things are things that happened in that gap. And then combine that with the day age view, which is that those days were not actual 24 hour periods, but rather just periods of time.

And one of the main arguments for this is the fact that God didn't create the sun, moon and stars until the fourth day. So how would you measure a 24 hour day on days one, two and three, if the mechanism through which we measure a 24 hour day is, you know, the earth rotating on its axis and, uh, you know, years being an earth, the earth rotating and so forth.

Now, um, I don't necessarily have a problem with that view. I also don't necessarily find it difficult that God could do days one, two and three in a 24 hour period without there being a sun, uh, an earth to rotate around its axis or a sun to rotate around.

Um, because God, again, being all powerful could have done that in a 24 hour period without having those mechanisms through which we measure time, um, or at least measured days.

Matt, it says, of course, in verse one that he created the heavens and the earth at that time. Right. Um, but that doesn't mean he developed it.

Correct. Correct. So again, the, there's this idea of, you know, and again, a lot of people with the older creation, even the older creationism view want to hold to things like the big bang, right? The big bang being something that God started.

Basically God, um, created out of nothing, the entire universe in one word or bang, right? That went out, uh, in long periods of time, which are not long periods of time for God, long periods of time elapsed where this universe, uh, started to develop again through God's fine tuning of the universal constants, right?

And, and then God created, you know, the earth created the sun, moon and stars created all of these things and then started creating vegetation and sea creatures and, um, and, uh, creatures of the air and eventually man and so forth.

So God still spoke into existence, all of these things. It just didn't happen in six, 24 hour days. Right. Um, that would be kind of the argument for the day age view. Um, and, and would allow you to say, sure, the earth is four and a half billion years old.

Sure. Uh, the universe is 13 and a half billion years old. You still don't hold to things like evolution. You still hold to a creationist worldview, but you just don't necessarily have six 24 hour days.

Now it does require you to read the word day differently than you can in a literal sense. Go ahead. Um, what, what.

Would the day age theorist argument, especially when you're saying that the language would, is a little different, um, when it comes to the Yom plus a number, any kind of number with it throughout the Pentateuch is a 24 hour timeframe.

So they're saying that there's a language change. I haven't.

Heard that one before. So it has, it has to do, and John Lennox does a better job than me of this, but it has to do with, um, saying day four versus the fourth day. So it, it's, um, it's, it's, I don't, it wasn't terribly persuasive to me.

It was just an interesting thing that you're like, oh yeah, it is different. Um, I really didn't understand why it made any real difference because Yom, the word day is the thing that we're talking about and read in context day in a number, you're talking about a 24 hour day versus saying the day of the Lord or saying, um, which is clearly talking about, um, you know, a period or, or you're talking about, um, uh, one of the other arguments was that how long is day seven?

Theoretically we're still in day seven, right? So can it refer to a 24 hour day or not? Because day seven, when God ceased his creative work, right? Um, it didn't like start again. It wasn't like day eight, he started creating again, right?

It was, it was day seven. And so one of the arguments is that, well, we're still in day seven. So how can it be a 24 hour day if it's thousands of years, right? I mean, even if you hold a younger creationist view, it's thousands of years.

Um, and so, um, the, the day age view I'm open to, but I still don't necessarily hold to it. I still hold to a young earth creationist view because I, I have a hard time pulling myself away from reading, uh, Genesis literally.

And again, I've already talked about the fact that an all powerful God doesn't have a problem with, with these quote unquote problems that, that, uh, you know, science today, um, actually, um, creates.

So, um,.

You see through a glass darkly.

Yes. Yes. And I'm sure there's gonna be lots of stuff we get to heaven. We're going to ask God, we're like, man, I really had that wrong, didn't I? So I have no issue with that. Uh, so again, uh, science dates the earth to be much older than 6 ,000 years.

Um, so one also argument is that God gave us rational minds. He, he gave us minds that could do things like eventually do things like determine the speed of light and stuff. So, um, you know, um, you know, given God's, uh, sort of natural revelation or general revelation, um, why, why wouldn't, why would he sort of do these things in a way to confuse us?

But then the alternate to that is why would he inspire, um, the words in Genesis to say day if they weren't. So you've got confusion on both ends, both of those arguments. Um, uh, there are certainly parts of the Bible that we don't want to take literally.

John Lennox actually brings up a, an interesting argument about a passage of scripture that talks about, um, you know, the, the pillars, uh, that hold, that hold up the earth and the earth is obviously not on pillars.

Um, and, uh, and so, uh, proponents of this view, um, basically say that Genesis doesn't really tell us how God created the universe. It just tells us how God created the earth and, and, uh, on all of the creatures, including man that are on it.

Um, and so there's four ages that you have to take into consideration, the age of the universe, the age of the earth, the age of life and the age of humanity. Because if you think about it in that sort of context, you've got, when was the universe created?

Um, that's that introduction plus maybe day one, you've got the age of the earth, which is God creating the actual earth, separating the waters, creating the land, uh, separating, um, you know, uh, heavens from, from earth.

You've got the age of life, which is when God's creating all of the life that's teeming in the waters and so forth. And then you have the age of humanity, which is day six when God created, um, Adam and Eve.

Um, and so these days in this particular view, there can be ages or periods of time between each of these ages. Um, the important thing that I, that the, the only reason that I'm even open to this view at all is the fact that, um, it still holds the most important thing, which is that God and God said, and then things happened, right?

Things were created. Um, and so it still holds to an all powerful God actually creating all the things we know in the observable. And then the fall still, and the fall is still preserved with all of this, which I'm going to get into when we get into theistic evolution and some of the problems with that.

Um, so like, you know, the, the rest of the account of the garden of Eden, um, you know, doesn't, isn't affected by this. This is just literally a difference of, of understanding the period, uh, the actual time period in which all of these things happened.

Um, which is why it's not very objectionable to me. Um, I don't necessarily, uh, I'm not super dogmatic about either of the views, but I, um, but I, uh, I still prefer to read the Bible literally than, than to not.