Science and the Bible: Made in the Image of God

As I continue my quest to see if the Bible agrees with basic scientific theories about creation, it is important to consider the claim that we are made in God’s image, which can be found in Genesis 1:26-27, Genesis 5:1-2, and Genesis 9:6. The reason this matters is because the Bible is a book of relationships, not a scientific textbook. To really understand who God is and how he might think about scientific topics, all we have is the Bible and all of God’s different image bearers that are running around in the world. It stands to reason that if we can take the best pieces of humanity and add that knowledge to the words given to us in the Bible, we should be able to get a better glimpse into the mind and character of God.

So, what do we know about God’s image bearers? We know that there are teachers, poets, scientists, authors, doctors, philosophers, engineers, philanthropists, chefs, accountants, police men, linguists, fire fighters, transportation specialists, and more. When we take the best people in these fields, add the character traits described by the fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control), and put all of this into a single person, someone quite amazing appears. Now add the characteristics of a omnipotent, or all-powerful; omniscient, or all-knowing; and omnipresent, or present everywhere God. Wow!

This is as close as I can imagine to understanding how God might appear as someone that I might interact with someday in heaven. When I read the Bible, I try to imagine this person speaking the words, only saying what is strictly necessary at the time. Think about the wisest, most intelligent, and most articulate person you know, and imagine this person trying to tell you a big idea regarding something that you are not quite capable of fully understanding. How might this person present the topic to you? This is how I envision God telling Moses the creation story. The big picture is there, but a lot of the specifics are either hand waved or missing.

As described in my blog post on the Introduction to the Creation Story, my view is that there are two different tellings of the creation of the world in the first two chapters of Genesis. The second story, in Genesis 2, is the logical version that follows the natural order of events and appears very historical in nature. The first story, in Genesis 1, is very beautifully written, but has a few oddities. How can there be light before the light source was created? How can vegetation exist without the sun? These questions in combination with the beautiful structure of 6 days, 3 kingdoms (light, atmosphere/sea, land), and 3 kings (sun/moon/stars, birds/sea creatures, animals/humans), lead me to believe that Genesis 1 is a beautiful, but creative picture of how God created the Earth. It has the major ideas, but hand waves the details. It appears to be a delightful attempt to describe a very complicated scientific process to people who know next to nothing about science. Well done!

Read: Science and the Bible: An Introduction to the Creation Story

If this is what is going on in Genesis, it is very easy to conclude that the strides that scientists have made into creating theories of how the world and everything in it came to be are not as far off as many Christians suppose. Sure, most of these theories never mention a God driving the actions, but whether it is God driving the action, or something else driving the action, the root of the theory remains functionally similar.

If Genesis 1 is a creative telling of creation, the words in Genesis 1:3 (ESV), “And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light,” could easily be a one sentence version of the Big Bang Theory. Remember, this is the most intelligent person you know trying to condense the entire creation story into a single page, while speaking to someone with very little knowledge of science.

Genesis 1:5 (ESV) then says, “God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.” Why would God use the reference to the first day, when the time between the creation of light and humans was at least 13 billion years? Going back to a creative telling of creation, the word “day” is a nice, literary way to break up major ideas. Remember that God is a master author and linguist! In this case, the first kingdom, light, has been described, so a transition phrase is needed to move the story along while keeping the writing short and beautiful. Each time a new kingdom or king is described, the number of days will advance by one. It is not historically accurate, but it give the broad picture in a very succinct and easy to understand literary method.

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

The creation story progresses until vegetation is created in Genesis 1:11. When we look at the theory of evolution, we see that scientists think that all life started from a single cell and that this cell was adapted and modified until we see all the varieties of plants and animals in the world today. The question is whether the adaptions are happening 100% on their own, or whether a creator is guiding it. In either case, the result is what we have today.

At this point, we need to go back to the idea that we are made in God’s image. How do the best scientists and engineers think about problems like this? This should give us a clue to why a creator guided evolutionary process is not only possible, it is probable!

As a former engineer, when I would build something, I would start with an idea in my mind, then I would commit it to paper, possibly redoing the papers a few times. To begin with, I would start with the big picture, then break it up into sub-blocks. These sub-blocks would then be divided further until I had a cluster of very simple ideas that I could combine in cool ways to do something much more powerful. Next, I would build a prototype to test my ideas. Some things I loved, but ended up removing them from the final design due to impracticality. Other things needed improvement or tweaks to make them work with everything else. A few things were perfect just the way they were, but others were dismal failures. By the time the final version was complete, sometimes it looked like the original prototype, and sometimes it didn’t.

Now, let’s compare this to what God might have done as he engineered the creation of the world. First, the theory of most scientists states that life likely began from a single cell, a very tiny building block. This is a perfect place for God to start! Next, multiple celled organisms started to appear. This is exactly how an engineer would design the process, building on a basic block to make it larger and more complex. Once a few prototypes have proven to be successful, an engineer might start making modifications to the blocks. Doesn’t this sound like the difference between plant cells and animal cells? Prokaryotes and Eukaryotes? My theory is that God just kept creating one organism after another, building on the features of his original creations.

Eventually, this might have brought God to his largest members of creation, dinosaurs! While dinosaurs are super cool and fun, they are not very practical. Since God knew that his end goal, or final creation project, was to create humans, he may have decided to have a little fun first. Remember that we are created in God’s image. How many little boys and girls never delighted in playing with their dinosaur toys? Shouldn’t God get to have a little fun? The Jurassic Period may have been God’s playtime. In the end, he must have decided that dinosaurs and humans were not compatible and he found a way to wipe them off the face of the earth. What little boy wouldn’t love to send an astroid into his dinosaur collection when he was done playing with them?

Read: Science and the Bible: Navigating the Dinosaur Dilemma

At some point, God must have decided that play time was over and he got down to the serious business of creating humans. Since we are created in God’s image, he must have modeled us after himself, but he likely used all of the building blocks that he had used in his other creations. Our bodies are made from animal cells; our structure is quite similar to that of an ape. This is all a scientific fact. The thing that makes us most unique is the breath of life, which I believe is our soul. Did Neanderthals have a soul? My guess is not. The main thing that separates humans from animals is the presence of a soul. A soul is an immortal, invisible gift from God and is completely separate from the evolutionary process. Science may say that we are basically an advanced monkey or ape, but this gift from God makes us so much more and is what truly makes us created in the image of God.

Do you see how much we have learned from considering our role as image bearers of God? Not all of my ideas are likely to be 100% correct, but given some of the things mentioned above, the story in Genesis 1 is also not likely to be 100% historically and scientifically accurate. Humans like to think about hard problems, so God likely gave us the framework of a very hard problem to make the life of a research scientist more interesting. What would life be like if everything was handed to us and we never had to think about problems that are fascinating, but difficult?

Reflection Questions

What is your definition of “made in the image of God”? Make a list of physical, mental, and spiritual characteristics.
Which of these things can be explained by science, and which of these can only be explained by God?
What makes a human different from a typical animal? What does both science and the Bible have to say about these differences?

Respond

As you consider the theme of being made in the image of God, are there any Bible verses or other examples that came to mind? If so, add a comment at the end of this post!