Science and the Bible: An Introduction to the Creation Story – Let’s Stop the Hateful Bickering

Why is it that many Christians insist that if a person believes the Bible, they must also disbelieve basic scientific principles, particularly when these principles have to do with the creation of the world? In my opinion, this belief and the adamant adherence to it, is a major reason why Christians have lost their credibility in the scientific community and have been relegated to the domain of irrelevance with nothing of value to say. In many cases, all a person has to do is say that they are a Christian, and every ear in the room will close to the words that follow. It is quite unfortunate since there are so many of us who feel like both the Bible and scientific principles are quite compatible. Why do Christians fight amongst themselves and insist on being right about a matter than cannot be proven in this lifetime? As you read this article, keep in mind that everything I say could be completely wrong. Or it could be completely right. Let’s learn how to converse about difficult topics while civilly disagreeing with each other!

The Surprise

My journey into this topic began with two events. The first was during my brief foray into the world of substitute teaching at a Christian elementary school. One day, I found that I was supposed to teach about the Biblical evidence that proved that there were dinosaurs on the ark and that this was the only possible scientific theory that Christians could have. Yikes! Horrified, I told the teacher that there was no way that I would teach that lesson and that I was planning teach the next lesson instead. She was quite surprised, but graciously agreed.

As I prepared to meet with the principal to discuss this further, a second enlightening event occurred. My research led me to a very interesting article by Tim Keller: “Creation, Evolution, and Christian Laypeople.” While I do see some small problems in it, this article clearly laid out fairly sound reasons why the school could not claim that their theory was the only possible Biblical interpretation. Unfortunately, the principal did not agree and I was never asked to substitute teach again.

Being a former engineer, the topic of science and the Bible is near and dear to my heart and I contented myself with teaching my kids theories that agreed with both the Bible and science, while also instructing them to be polite in the classroom when these topics came up. While I personally disagree with the young earth philosophy, there is no reason to belittle others who hold a different opinion from my own. Maybe when I reach heaven, God will explain to me why the young earth philosophy was the right choice, but until proven otherwise, I personally choose to believe in the scientific evidence that I believe God left for us to find.

Other Memories

These events triggered several other memories. The first was from my high school days where I remember watching a youth group video showing evidence for the young earth philosophy: that the world was only 6,000 years old and that dinosaurs were wandering the Earth at the same time as humans. Fortunately, it appears that I blocked it out of my mind, dismissing it as illogical nonsense. Unfortunately, one of the other members of the youth group took the video to heart and she casually mentioned the evidence as fact in one of her college classes. Laughed at and ridiculed, it took her quite a while to recover her faith in the legitimacy of the Bible.

Read: Science and the Bible: Navigating the Dinosaur Dilemma

The second memory was from my college days. In one conversation, a boy recalled a pastor telling him that dinosaurs never existed and that dinosaur bones were placed on the earth to test our faith. Given that this boy was a scientist and engineer who believed in an old earth, this explanation gave him many doubts about the legitimacy of the church. It was not until he interacted with other scientists who believed in both the Bible and science until he could fully commit to his faith. When I told this story to one of my uncles, he recalled a similar experience as a child. Unfortunately, this is a way too common response when kids come to their pastors with legitimate scientific questions. Is it any wonder that our kids are leaving the church in startling numbers?

A third memory of a scientific discussion was around the issue of communion in the Catholic and Lutheran churches. In the Catholic view, there are two miracles in communion. The first is that when the priest speaks the words of institution, that the bread and wine turns physically into the body and blood of Jesus. Since this can easily be disproven with science, the second miracle is that the body and blood cannot be detected through scientific methods. Quite dissatisfactory! The Lutheran view is slightly more sensible, but still quite preposterous. It claims that the bread and wine stay bread and wine, but that the real body and blood of Jesus is mixed “in, with, and under” the bread and wine, making it invisible to the detection with a microscope. At the time, I dismissed both of these views as nonsense that was written hundreds of years before modern scientific discoveries. I chose not to care about the specific teaching of the church and held the view that someday God would forgive my misunderstandings and explain the correct answer to me. Fortunately, if you can’t block this issue out of your mind, there are plenty of churches who believe that the bread and wine stay bread and wine, and that it is only Jesus’ spiritual presence that stays with us in communion. This view is much more sensible and completely compatible with both the Bible and science! Figure out how much you care about this issue and find a theory you can live with!

I’m sure that you have plenty of your own stories where you have encountered a startling collision between the Bible and science. Keep in mind that Christians do not have all of the answers, and some have the view that having faith means that the mind need to be turned off. My opinion is that this is not the way God created us. Instead of being mindless objects of blind faith, we are created in God’s image with the ability to think and reason through some very difficult problems. Often we can reaffirm our faith in the answers to many of the questions we ask. Let’s put this God given ability to work and see if we can make sense of both the Bible and science!

Read: Science and the Bible: Made in the Image of God

In any case, the main thing to remember is that this is not a salvation issue. Even if we get the answers wrong in these topics, my guess is that the worst that is going to happen is that we will get to heaven and God will tell us that we were wrong. Believing in the wrong God is a salvation issue, but believing in the wrong theory of creation is not. The biggest danger is that by sharing our opinions, we will cause someone to choose to reject Jesus, which Matthew 18:6 tells us is a very serious issue. This causing of another to stumble is a much bigger deal than anything else and I pray that sharing my opinions will do no such thing. My hope is that my thoughts will instead cause people to reevaluate the claims of Jesus with the knowledge that there are Christians out there who deeply believe in the validity of science. It is easiest to find Jesus when there are no barriers in the way!

The Biblical Creation Story

Two Stories

It is interesting to note that there are actually two creation stories in the Bible. The first is in Genesis 1, and the second is a retelling in Genesis 2. There is something quite odd in these two stories: read them and see if you can find some oddities in the order of events of creation. Did you find them?

While I don’t agree with all of the points made in Tim Keller’s article, in Genesis 1, we do see that light is created before the light source, and vegetation is created before there is sunlight. While God does have the ability to bypass the natural order of things, Genesis 2:5 implies that there is a natural order required in the fact that plants need rain to grow. Genesis 2:6 does provide a potential solution to this problem by sending water from the ground, but it does not solve the problem of lack of sunlight.

When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground,and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground.
Genesis 2:5-6 (ESV)

If I am correct that there is a conflict between the two stories, and we believe that the Bible is the true and accurate word of God, it is logical to assume that one of these versions is the historically accurate version of events, while the other is a poetic/creative rendering of the events. We see this type of pattern throughout the Bible: Exodus 14 tells the historical version of the parting of the red sea, while Exodus 15 sings a song about it. Similarly, Judges 4 tells the historical version of a victory of Canaan, where Judges 5 is another song. In both cases, the poetic/musical versions give the main ideas, but do take a little bit of creative license when describing the actual events. This is an accepted literary practice!

Read: Science and the Bible: Exploring Literary Devices in Genesis

So, now we need to figure out which version in Genesis is a creative telling and which is literal. Given that Genesis 2 has the “logical” order of events, this alone might be the best reason to pick the second telling. The next step is to look at the structure of Genesis 1. As we study the language, we will see that topics are grouped together in a way that one might group them in poetry. The idea of time being broken into 6 days could be poetic. The idea of the 3 kingdoms (light, atmosphere/sea, and land) in days 1-3, and 3 kings (sun/moon/stars, birds/sea creatures, and land animals/humans) in days 4-6, could be poetic. Taken together, these observations point to Genesis 1 being a poetic or creative telling of the creation story, leaving Genesis 2 to being the historically accurate version.

Of course, we could choose to take the opposite view, but if we assume that Genesis 1 is literal and Genesis 2 is creative, then when the creative story continues into Genesis 3 and all the way into Genesis 50, we would have to dismiss historical validity the vast majority of book of Genesis. An even further stretch is that we would have to disbelieve basic scientific principles that have been discovered about the age of the earth, the way it was formed, and the process of filling it with life. This takes significantly more faith than assuming that Genesis 1 is the poetic/creative version. While I admit that I could be wrong, as an engineer, I prefer to trust my logical instincts and choose the model that best fits the data.

Questions that Require a Scientific Answer

Now that we have established that the words in Genesis 1 may not be 100% scientifically accurate, we can move onto the actual scientific questions raised in Genesis 2-50. As you consider these questions, think about the idea that we are made in God’s image. If God is a master scientist, engineer, and inventor, how might he carry out the task of finishing his creation? How might a chemist create a new medication? How might an engineer develop the longest bridge? How might an inventor test his ideas? Do these people often choose their first design as their final implementation? We can get a lot of clues to God’s thought processes by understanding people with a shadow of those same characteristics.

In Genesis 2:7 (ESV), what does it mean when it says: “Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.”
- What does formed a man from the dust of the ground mean? Could this be a reference to the evolutionary process?
- What does breath the breath of life mean? Could this be a reference to giving Adam a soul?
In Genesis 2:20 (ESV), what does, “But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him” mean?
- Was Adam looking for a helper among the animals?
- Is it possible that humans in a different stage of evolution, but without the breath of life, were brought to Adam and found to be unsuitable?
- Is this why God had to make Eve from Adam’s rib, giving her the breath of life as well?
In Genesis 4:15 (ESV), why did God need to put a mark on Cain: “And the Lord put a mark on Cain, lest any who found him should attack him”?
- If all people on earth consisted of Adam, Eve, and dead Abel, why did he need this mark to distinguish him from the others?
In Genesis 4:17 (ESV), where did Cain find his wife: “Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch”?
- Adam and Eve do not appear to have more children until Genesis 4:25, although it technically is possible that Adam and Eve gave birth to a daughter and it was not mentioned.
- Is it possible that Cain married a human without the breath of life?
Also in Genesis 4:17 (ESV), it appears that Cain is building a city: “When he built a city, he called the name of the city after the name of his son, Enoch.”
- Where did Cain find people to fill his city?
- Did he have enough time to have enough children and grandchildren to fill it?
What does Genesis 6:1-3 (ESV) mean: “When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years”?
- Who are the sons of God? Is it possible that these are the people with the breath of life?
- Who are the daughters of humans? Is it possible that these are the people without the breath of life?
- When the Lord wants to stop contending with humans, which group of people is this in reference to?
When God looks at the evilness of the human race in Genesis 6:5 (ESV), what could be his thought process: “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”
- Is the flood God’s way of removing people without the breath of life from the population, and Noah’s Ark his way of ensuring the “survival of the fittest”?

These questions are likely to greatly disturb people who have held onto the cherished childhood belief that the Earth was made in a literal 6 days and that Adam and Eve were the first human bodies to walk the earth. It is my hope that Christians reading this will keep an open mind and really evaluate the words of the Bible in combination with what the human race has discovered about science. It is my strong believe that commonly accepted scientific theories, such as evolution, have a lot to say on these topics. Think about how many pages are in a kindergarten level science book. Now consider how many pages of the Bible deal with the creation story. Is it possible that God did not answer every question about his methods of creation, but instead left quite a few things for us to discover?

If you are a Christian who disagrees with my opinions, I would like you to really consider how vocal you would like to be in front of non-Christians. If you have any doubt in your mind that Genesis 1 may not be completely literal, consider the harm you may be doing to the cause of Christianity by insisting that Christians are required to make a choice between the Bible and the commonly accepted scientific principles of how the earth came into existence and how life began. Consider the idea that God is the creator of science, and that he could have used these scientific principles to create the world just as easily as he could have snapped his fingers. Do you really want to destroy many people’s faith by insisting that 1-2 pages of the Bible says everything that a person needs to know how both the earth and all creation was formed? Please leave some room for grace and try to disagree with me with kindness and respect that will not result in people leaving the faith.

Stay tuned as I write more blog posts that explore these topics!

Reflection Questions

What are your beliefs about how the world and all the life in it was created?
Read Genesis 1 and compare the creation story in that chapter to the creation story in Genesis 2. What did you notice?
If you had to choose either Genesis 1 or Genesis 2 to be a literal telling, and the other to be a poetic telling, which would you choose and why?
If you believe that modern scientific theories about creation are not compatible with the Bible, what are your reasons?
If you believe that modern scientific theories about creation are compatible with the Bible, how might you explain your views to either Christians or non-Christians?

Respond

If this article made you think that it is possible that the Bible and science aren’t as far apart as some people make it out to be, consider leaving a comment.

Also, as you consider the theme of science and the Bible, what topics interest you? I would love to hear your ideas for future blog posts!