“Nearly all peoples have developed their own creation myth, and the Genesis story is just the one that happened to have been adopted by one particular tribe of Middle Eastern herders. It has no more special status than the belief of a particular West African tribe that the world was created from the excrement of ants,” said Richard Dawkins, a progressive creationist (Gitt 3). Is Genesis just a myth? That is what some people have concluded. Their theories lead to the belief that not only is Genesis a myth but the whole Bible as well. When all explanations for what triggered evolution were found faulty, people tried to combine evolution and God by reinterpreting the Genesis account of creation to fit evolutionary beliefs. However, all it creates is bemusement; Genesis clearly states the days of creation occurred in just six of our days.
The Hebrew word used in Genesis for day is yom. Yom means a literal twenty-four hour period or the daylight time (Ham 17). Compromising believers have changed day to mean millions of years. When Genesis is not being taken literally, people read into it. Scripture is twisted to say what they want. The gap theory, theistic evolution, progressive creation, and the framework hypothesis are four current ways people try to combine evolution and creation. These compromises between creation and evolution change their beliefs and faith in God.
The gap theory places a several billion year gap between Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” and 1:2, “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” The gap theory declares God initiated evolution in Genesis 1:1, and then in Genesis 1:2, He destroyed the earth by sending Satan and his demons here (Grig 50). This event was so powerful, it created fossils all over the earth. Next, God used the six days of creation (recreation) to begin life on earth again like Genesis says in six twenty-four hour days. The Nelson Study Bible writes in its footnotes on Genesis 1:1,
“Here it means that God renewed what was in a chaotic state. God changed chaos into cosmos, disorder into order, emptiness into fullness… The two words, without form and void, express one concept, chaos. The earth had been reduced to this state–it was not the way God had first created it” (Morris b).
However, the earth did not begin, end, and begin again in Genesis. This is not possible because of significant evidence proving the gap theory wrong.
The biggest problem with this theory is death occurred before Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden (Morris c). If evolutionary processes developed as the gap theory states, creatures must have died before Adam even came into existence. Death is a result of sin, so sin must have existed before Adam and Eve. But creationists believe sin entered the world through Adam and not before. Romans 5:12 corroborates this. “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned.” If death came before sin, it destroyed the basis for Christ’s atonement because Christ died to save us from sin. Also, God called the Garden of Eden good when he created it. A holy God completely separate from sin would not call something good unless it was perfect.
The Earth could not have been perfect if Satan and his demons ruled here. The gap theory says when the earth was extirpated, it wiped out every living thing. If the earth was destroyed between Genesis 1:1, 2; the forces necessary to do that would have demolished all fossils also, so according to evolutionary thinking no fossils would exist today (Morris b). Obviously they do. The gap theory believers think the Genesis flood was local and not a global catastrophic event. Thus, they believe fossils were formed when Satan came to earth between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 and not during the flood. However, the Bible makes it clear the flood was global which explains the fossils. Some theories still prefer the evolutionary way of explaining creation though.
Theistic evolution believes God began the ‘big bang’ and guided evolution to create humans (Grig 50). But according to the Bible, God is the cause of all things. “…yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live: and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live” (1 Corinthians 8:6). Theistic evolution teaches God started evolution and guided it, but humans did not come from Him. However, in Matthew 19:4 Jesus refers to God creating man. “‘Haven’t you read,’ he replied, ‘that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female.”” Theistic evolution has taken God and placed him in all the places of their beliefs that do not make sense thus making God a “god of the gaps” (Gitt 49). They change the Bible wherever necessary to fit their beliefs about the beginning of time.
According to theistic evolution, it took God billions of years to create the universe and humans. Like the gap theory, for evolution to happen, death was required before Adam sinned. Theistic evolutionists ascribe death as a part of God’s creation. This is not possible because death came after, not before, sin. Not only do theistic evolutionists place death before sin, but their beliefs also collapse the basis for the Sabbath.
In the Ten Commandments, the six days of work and one day of rest devoted to God, are based on how God created the earth (Gitt 49, 51). Exodus 20:8-11 says, “For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” Theistic evolutionary beliefs have destroyed the foundations of the Bible and made it a myth.
In addition, theistic evolutionists misinterpret the purpose of God (Gitt 50). God’s purpose is clear in the Bible. Creating us was the most important part of creation. The whole Bible revolves around mankind, not apes or some other creature, but us. Evolution claims we will eventually evolve into something better. But the Bible says we are the purpose of creation. No creature will come along further developed and more important than we are. By thinking we are not God’s purpose, His mission and the entire Bible becomes a fairy tale.
The Bible is also viewed as a fairy tale because Scripture is not being read the way it was meant. Theistic evolutionists pick and choose what they want to obey, breaking up the basis for the Bible. However, the Bible is absolute truth and the authoritative Word of God. Evolutionists throw that away. Clearly, there are many problems with trying to combine evolution and the Bible, but there are still many who believe it can be done.
A third theory, progressive creation, or day age theory, claims God created the universe in seven days (Grig 50). But the days were not ordinary days. Every day of creation was millions of years long. Progressive creation misinterprets the Bible and contradicts itself in several areas.
This theory states the Genesis flood was only local, even though Genesis gives an accurate account of the flood.
“Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; men and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds of the air were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left and those with him in the ark. The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days” (Genesis 7:23-24).
This passage indicates the entire earth was covered with water. Even the highest mountains were buried beneath at least twenty feet of water (Genesis 7:20). The flood had to have been global; there is no other solution. Progressive creationists teach nature is perfect as it was in the Garden of Eden. God would not have flooded the earth, though, if it was perfect and there would be no reason for heaven if we live in a perfect world now.
Dr. Hugh Ross, a progressive creationist, calls nature the sixty-seventh book of the Bible. He believes the Bible says God cannot lie. Therefore Ross makes the assumption, “so the record of nature must be just as perfect, and reliable and truthful as the sixty-six books of the Bible that is part of the Word of God” (Ham). Yes, God cannot lie, but Romans 8:22 says, “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.” Nature is not perfect by far and it is definitely not a book of the Bible. There is no basis to even consider nature as a Bible book. No basis exists for death occurring before sin either.
God created the Garden of Eden to be perfect. There was no death because the Garden was perfect and plants were given as food. But everything changed when Adam and Eve sinned. Actually, the mission of Christ becomes a myth if death is placed before sin. According to Ken Ham, Dr. Ross interprets John 3:16 “For God so loved the human race that he went to the expense of building a hundred-billion trillion-stars and carefully shaped and crafted them for sixteen-billion years so that at this brief moment in time we could all have a nice place to live” (Ham). God’s mission of sending His Son is completely destroyed by this statement. God stated in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, so that whoever believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.” God came to rescue us from sin, so we can be with Him forever in a perfect world not this sinful earth. The main problem with progressive creation is clear. This theory ruins the mission of God. But there is another theory, the framework hypothesis which tries to solve the problems of all the other theories and still combine evolution with creation.
The framework hypothesis, a fourth theory, states Genesis is written as an example of the Sabbath and is not the account of creation (Grig 50). By believing this, the framework hypothesis can say life was created through evolution because Genesis is not a record of creation. However, there is too much extra information in Genesis if it was meant only to teach the theology of the Sabbath. Why then is there so much extra information recorded? It has to be because Genesis was not meant only to teach about the Sabbath. Creation makes no sense in a different order as the framework hypothesis suggests.
The appearance of parallelism between the days of creation is the main basis for the framework theory. It claims Genesis is not in chronological order, therefore it is not an account of creation. Framework theory believers claim a similar pattern exists between day one and four, day two and five, and day three and six. By believing in this, the framework hypothesis concludes the days of creation are not in order, but this, of course, is not biblical.
The Genesis account is not logical if the days of creation are rearranged. Below is a chart that appeared in an article written by Andrew Kulikovsky, displaying the supposed connection between the days of creation (Kulikovsky).
Day 1: Let there be light (1:3). Day 4: Let there be lights (1:14).
Day 2: Let there be an expanse to separate water from water (1:6). Day 5: Let the water teem with creatures and let birds fly above the earth (1:20).
Day 3: Let dry land appear (1:9).Let the land produce vegetation (1:11). Day 6: Let the land produce living creatures (1:24). Let us make man (1:26). I give you every seed bearing plant…and every tree that has fruit with seed in it…for food (1:29).
First, God said, “Let there be light,” on day one. On day four God created the planets, the stars, the moon, and the sun. Even though God created darkness and light on day one, it does not include the sun and moon. He merely created light. We do not know if it was heavenly light or not, but we do know He created the stars and moon to separate light from darkness on day four. This means light and darkness must have existed before the sun and moon to be separated by them.
Next, the framework hypothesis says day two and five are alike, suggesting a different order. God created a space called sky to separate water from water on day two. On day five, He created birds to fly in the sky and creatures to swim in the sea. The expanse was made on day two and on day five He created creatures to live in them. Day five must have come after day two for this to happen. Also, the seas were not officially established as seas until day three, so birds and fish on day five could not have lived before day three.
Then, God made dry land appear, and He also commanded the land to produce vegetation on day three. Animals were created on day six and man was made to rule over them. If day three did not precede day six, the animals would have starved because vegetation wasn’t created yet and the creatures were herbivores. So day six must have occurred after the plants were created on day three.
The days of creation had to happen in the exact order recorded in Genesis. Any other order would change the next step and alter the entire process. The framework hypothesis has no base and is therefore false.
The problems with these theories are easy to see. The gap theory attempts to place a gap between verses in the Bible and ends up placing death before sin. Theistic evolution puts evolution wherever it wants and makes the Bible relative. Progressive creation makes the days of creation long and puts a perfect God in an imperfect nature. The framework hypothesis mixes up Genesis and changes the creation week so it is irrelevant. All of these theories have over the years caused people to turn from the true purpose of the Bible. We are here to go into all the world and tell people about Christ, so they might be saved. Without a literal Genesis the Bible becomes a myth, and so does God. People today need to see the error in compromise and turn back to the truth.
Works Cited
Gitt, Werner. “10 Dangers of theistic evolution.” Creation Ex Nihilo September-
November 1995: 49-51.
Grig, Russell. “The Future.” Creation September-November 2003: 50-51.
Kulikovsky, Andrew. “A Critique of the Literary Framework View of the Days of
Creation.” Kulikovsky Online.net. July 28, 2001. (http://www.kulikovskyonline.net/hermeneutics/framework.pdf); (4 Feb. 2004).
Ham, Ken. “Eisegesis.” Creation June-August 2002: 16-19.
Ham, Ken. “What’s wrong with ‘progressive creation?’” Answers in Genesis.
(http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/4077.asp) 2004. (2 Feb. 2004).
Morris, Henry. “Why the Gap Theory Won’t Work.” Back to Genesis November 1997: a-
c.
The Student Bible. New International Version. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan
Publishing House, 1992.
I’m a 17 year old homeschooled Junior in Highschool. I enjoy writing and have written three essays for Midwest Creation Fellowship Essay Contest, placing each time. My research papers usually concern creation/evolution topics because I believe its important for one’s faith and also is a way to lead others to Christ.