DAY SIX

Genesis 1:24-25

As we read the inspired eye-witness account of the creation of the land animals on Day Six, notice again the repeated stress on the fact that God made them "according to their kinds" – able to vary and adapt to the environment, but not evolve into different kinds in the way Darwin envisioned.

The idea of evolution was not new, even in Darwin’s day. Citing the ideas of ancient Greeks thinkers such as Heraclitus, Empedocles, and Aristotle, the Encyclopedia Britannica says: "The notion that all kinds of animals and plants may have come into existence by the growth and modification of primordial germs is as old as speculative thought".

As with the rest of Greek science, I suppose, these evolutionary ideas remained mere speculation in the absence of practical investigation and organized observation. However, during the century before Darwin, which witnessed the birth of geology as a legitimate science in British universities, dedicated pioneers undertook systematic studies of their native rock formations and their fossil content, their work being greatly facilitated by the numerous canal excavation projects being undertaken at the time.

Aided by the brilliant French anatomist Georges Cuvier, these early workers learned how to interpret their findings, many of which were no more than isolated vertebrae, and fragments of jawbones, skulls and limbs. From the size and surface contours of bones, Cuvier was able to ascertain where muscle tendons had been attached and how many, and also estimate muscle size and strength. He was also able to determine from surface contours of individual teeth, and also from the relative sizes and shapes of the sockets in a jawbone that had held them, whether the creature had been a reptile or mammal, herbivore or carnivore. From the size of fossil vertebrae and estimates of the number in the spinal column, Cuvier and others were able to estimate the overall size of the extinct creatures.

What began to become clear to Cuvier was that the lower Paleozoic and Mesozoic strata contained fossils of organisms that no longer existed, grotesque reptilian creatures that had somehow become extinct and in vast numbers – leading him to believe that the Earth had been overtaken on a number of occasions by extremely violent catastrophes. Such rapid-acting events, however, did not suit the thinking of uniformitarians such as James Hutton and Charles Lyell who desperately wanted all rock strata to have been deposited infinitesimally slowly over multiple millions of years by the gentle accumulation of sediments on the ocean bed – a belief that was later welcomed with open arms by Charles Darwin. Old Earth theory does of course allow for the pre-Adamic world to have endured that long.

Confident that the war against creationism has been won, evolutionary geologists have more recently been happy to return to Cuvier-style catastrophism in order to try to explain their findings, such as mass graves that can contain the fossils remains of hundreds of different creatures all jumbled together.

Nevertheless, what did become clear in those early days was that some kind of awful pre-historic world had once existed on our planet, populated by organisms generally quite different to those with which we are familiar, and often of gigantic proportions. Hence the notion that those unfamiliar fish, amphibians and reptiles had shared a common ancestry with the creatures that now existed and so illustrated the evolution of life and its emergence from sea onto land and even into the air -- and that their extinction likewise illustrated Natural Selection at work.

Old Earth theory, by way of contrast, suggests that those highly complex and fully formed Paleozoic and Mesozoic organisms simply represent the whole flora and fauna of the pre-Adamic Earth – and that they perished, in the manner envisioned by Cuvier, as the result of one or more catastrophic events, possibly extending over millions of years. Furthermore, the ecology of that repulsive reptilian world demonstrated the consequences a cold-blooded competitive and violent way of life -- one quite opposite to that intended for man, as demonstrated by the warm and cuddly creatures of the original ecology of Eden.

Influential in the development of the Darwin’s evolutionary ideas was Renee Descartes’ crucial misconception the that animals are merely complex machines, whose structure, behaviour and instincts would one day be fully understood in terms of physical principles and processes -- which is, of course, what evolutionary science is still desperately trying to do.

By way of example, science currently puzzles over the mysterious growth of embryos, whereby non-specialized cells suddenly discover at certain stages that they have to generate specialized offspring, some skin, some muscle and so on – and also how one group of cells somehow "knows" that they must coordinate their activities with millions of others and arrange themselves spatially to make an arm whilst others make a leg, or a foot or a finger.

Biologist Rupert Sheldrake now suggest that such growth is directed by an invisible "morphic field" -- which he likens to the field around a magnet which causes iron filings to arrange themselves in pre-determined patterns. Still a confirmed evolutionist, Sheldrake now thinks that it is morphic field that evolves and then imposes its new patterns on the physical molecules under its control.

Despite his stubborn adherence to evolution, however, perhaps Sheldrake has actually stepped closer the truth than others -- because the Bible tells us in several places that there is indeed a non-physical component in man and the animals. In the book of Job, for example, we read: "But there is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty gives them understanding" (32:8), and in Ecclesiastes: "Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upwards and the spirit of the beast goes down to the earth?" (3:21). Human life, at least, is more than the mere mechanical movement of atoms and molecules, as anyone who has ever seen a dead body instinctively know.

Returning to Genesis, the account identifies three groups of land creatures – a) cattle or livestock, b) small creatures that move or creep along the ground, and c) beasts of the earth or wild animals – all designed to reproduce after their kind.

Speculating about the supposed evolution of farm animals, such as sheep which are of course totally "unfit" to survive without human protection, and also commercial plants, which he imagined arose accidentally over many millions of generations from wild ancestors, Darwin says: "One of the most remarkable features in our domesticated races is that we see adaptation, not for the animal's or plant's own good, but to man's use or fancy." Then, in a comment reminiscent of Gould’s "punctuated equilibrium" theory, which allows sudden, massive and inexplicably complex mutations, he adds: "Some variations useful to him have probably arisen suddenly." He then concludes that: "The origin of most of our domestic animals will probably for ever remain vague."

In the "Origin of Species", Darwin actually describes the wonderful adaptive potential that God built into domesticated organisms and also its purpose, but again draws a wrong conclusion -- Quote: "When we compare the dray-horse and the race-horse, the various breeds of sheep fitted either for cultivated land or mountain pasture, with the wool of one breed good for one purpose, and that of another for another purpose; when we compare the host of agricultural, culinary, and flower-garden races of plants, most useful to man at different seasons and for different purposes, or so beautiful in his eyes, we must look farther than mere variability."

The simple truth is that, although God ordained constructive variation, creatures always reproduce "after their kind", as Genesis says. No wonder committed evolutionist, Gordon Rattray Taylor comments: "Though geneticists have been breeding fruit flies for sixty years or more in labs all round the world -- flies which produce new generations every 11 days -- they have never yet seen the emergence of a new species."

Biologist R.C. Lewontin points out in "The Doctrine of DNA", that Darwin actually took the brutal ideas of early nineteenth century economics and applied them to the natural world. Thomas Malthus, whose writings provided inspiration for Darwin's idea of natural selection by survival of the fittest, resulting in "descent with modification",was an English vicar who thought that the Poor Law of the time was far too generous, and would encourage shiftless members of society to breed more quickly and so lead to social unrest. The Poor Law interfered with the process of natural economic selection.

The account of creation for Day Six continues . . .

Genesis 1:26-27

Beginning with the second verse, we read that man did not descend from some common ancestor with the apes that had somehow earlier evolved into male and female forms, but was created by God. If Darwin thought that the human eye was complicated, I wonder what he thought about the sexual mechanisms of the male and female anatomy? No less an evolutionary authority than Richard Dawkins admits, in "The Selfish Gene", that the existence of sex is "an extremely difficult question for the evolutionist to answer" and adds: "I am frankly going to evade it."

In the plant world, he points out, plants such as the elm tree are able to propagate themselves by putting out runners or suckers under the ground that then spring up as new trees. This kind of sex-less, asexual reproduction is very common in the plant world and is familiar to any gardener. Interestingly, an elm sucker remains joined to both parent and daughter trees, so that, in due time, it is possible to have an entire elm wood that is in reality one individual organism. Dawkins sees the glory of Creation so clearly, but not its Creator.

Returning to the account, we read in the first verse that in contrast to the animals, which were created according to their various animal kinds, man was made according to the God kind -- in his image and after his likeness. This truth, which is repeated over and over again in the Bible, even in the Lord’s Prayer, is just too much for most of the commentators who search instead for some kind of symbolic or "spiritual" meaning. The common sense interpretation of these verses is in fact verified later in Genesis, where we read that Adam, at the age of 130 years, became the father of son "in his own likeness, after his image" (5:3).

We see then that man was made like God in two ways -- in his image, and after his likeness. The first word, "image", is a concrete word, referring to shape, and is also used to describe idols. In other words, man looks like God -- although at this time composed of flesh and blood, rather than spirit.

It is just that simple. In fact, the International Critical Commentary says: "The Old Testament writers constantly attribute to Him bodily parts; and that they ever advanced to the conception of God as a formless spirit would be difficult to prove." In that quotation, perhaps the word "advanced" should be changed to "regressed".

The second word, "likeness", we are told by the scholars, is an abstract word and seems to imply that man is like his Creator in important ways other than bodily shape. One obvious way in which we resemble God is in our intelligence and creativity -- the ability to think, to analyze and understand, to use mathematics and language, to hypothesize and experiment, to imagine, and to conceive and achieve purposes.

This is precisely why, in the very next sentence, God gives man authority, or dominion, over this tiny corner of the universe -- to rule over the animals and to subdue the earth, as we now read . . .

Genesis 1:28

And God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.

Notice that God, in effect, commanded man to be creative, to use his God-like intelligence and creativity to subdue the world and rule over it, to exercise dominion or rulership -- to investigate, to discover, to design, invent and build, to create beauty and excellence, to make life fun and fulfilling.

Man Needs Meaning

How tragic, then, that by Darwin’s time, the religious leaders who claimed to represent that God were encouraging intellectual stagnation -- leading Gordon Rattray Taylor to comment: "If Darwin plunged us into a purposeless world of chance, it was because he was in reaction from a philosophical and theological position which not only ruled out scientific inquiry but denied man's freedom to modify his own future."

Having been fed such distortions, it is no wonder that Taylor also comments that many people opt for evolution because they: "very much prefer to think that we live in a world which we, by our own efforts, can alter" -- which is of course precisely what God wants them to do! Troubled himself by the futility of evolution, Taylor concludes rather sadly that there is "something repellent" about the idea that the world we live in is totally meaningless.

Man’s ability to carry out God’s creative command is well described by Darwin himself in the following comment – Quote: "We cannot suppose that all the breeds were suddenly produced as perfect and as useful as we now see them. The key is man's power of accumulative selection: nature gives successive variations; man adds them up in certain directions useful to him."

He continues: "The great power of this principle of selection is not hypothetical. Several of our eminent breeders have, even within a lifetime, modified to a large extent their breeds of cattle and sheep. Breeders habitually speak of an animal's organization as something plastic, which they can model almost as they please." Darwin’s wonderful observations simply confirm the scientific accuracy of Genesis.

The account for Day Six now concludes . . .

Genesis 1: 29-31

Having completed his work of creating animal and plant life, God observed that it was very good.

A World of Peace and Harmony

The Earth was once again a pleasant and safe place to live, a world of beauty, peace and plenty. There was no evil, anxiety or fear, and no killing, because there were no carnivores seeking to destroy the lives of other creatures. The whole ecology was initially benign, not "red in tooth and claw" as it is now. There was no struggle for survival with strong destroying the weak in a manner that later repulsed Darwin and drove him to develop his theory of evolution.

Nature today, however, is violent and competitive, a fact that greatly bothered Darwin, who was apparently a kind-hearted and gentle person. Having at one time trained for the Christian ministry, he was troubled by the evil he saw in nature, and it pained him to think of a God of love creating such a violent world.

In fact, the thought was so unbearable to him that he began, in desperation I believe, to search for an alternative solution, one that would let God off the hook and so ease his own troubled mind of the burden of resenting his Creator. Evolution, which laid off the blame for the violence and bloodshed onto mindless Natural Selection, was the answer he found -- but as he makes clear at the end of "The Origin of Species", his motives were never atheistic.

A further implication of these verses seems to be that human beings were originally vegetarians – herbivores, as were the animals. Commentators make the distinction that man was to eat cereal grains and fruit, and animals the foliage of plants, including grass. At that time, also, there were no poisonous plants that could be eaten by mistake as there are now.

The prophets Micah and Isaiah foretell the restitution of those idyllic conditions -- a time when the wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, and calf and the lion and the yearling together, and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, the infant will play near the hole of the cobra, and the young child put his hand into the viper's nest (Isaiah 11:6-8). At that time, as in Eden, no creature will do harm or destroy, says God, for the Earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea. Neither shall men learn war any more (Micah 4:3).

Young Earth creationists seize on God’s declaration that everything was very good to claim that everything could not have been good if the remains of evil and violent creatures lay buried beneath the ground as the Old Earth theory implies. The obvious point is that God’s observation applied to the new things he had just created.

However, there may be an instructive parallel with the situation described by the prophet Malachi that will exist in the future when yet another new Earth will be created: Quote -- "All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble; and that day that is coming will set them on fire . . . then you will trample down the wicked; they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day when I do these things" (Malachi 4:1,3)