Like most doctrinal statements, the basic premise of creation is easy to understand at its surface: To glorify himself, God created the universe from nothing, and it was good. Prior to the creation, nothing existed except for God himself. This is called creation ex nihilo, or “creation out of nothing”. This means that there is no matter in the universe that is eternal. If matter existed before God, He would have no right to rule over it and we would have no guarantee that He rules over everything. The universe and the unseen spiritual realm were created to bring glory to God and God was very pleased with the creation, calling it good.
Humans were a special creation of God, created in God’s image, and the pinnacle of God’s creation. Humans resemble God more than any other creature and are called to rule over them. This biblical account is far more encouraging than the secular view that humans are just an insignificant speck in the immense universe.
God the Father was the “leader” in the act of creation but the Son was the agent who made it possible and the Holy Spirit gave life to the creation but the triune God is distinct and separate from His creation. He made it and rules over it, is not a part of it, but continues to be involved with it. This immanence clearly contrasts with the materialism (the belief that the universe is all there is) believed by most unbelievers today. This also differs from pantheism, the belief that the entire universe is God, or dualism, the belief that God and the universe have always both existed. Deists believe that God created the universe and left it to run unattended.
God created the universe to show his glory not out of necessity but as a totally free act and to take delight in it. Though some may abuse the now-fallen created order, we must not, as our time here is only temporary and our possessions are not eternal. We look forward to the kingdom above.
Contemporary science has always tried to either prove or disprove the Bible but the biblical view of the universe has always been correct even though the Bible does not tell us the exact date the earth or humans were created. Unlike many scientific experiments, however, creation cannot be replicated in a lab but, when all of the facts about creation are finally understood, we can be assured that there will be no final conflict between the facts and scripture. Since God knows all the facts and both created the universe and divinely authored the Bible, there can be no contradictions. We humans just haven’t learned everything yet.
There are many theories regarding the creation. Theistic Evolution is the belief that God guided the process of evolution, thus applying the trait of randomness to God—a trait contrary to Scripture—and contradicting the primacy and immediate response of God’s word and many parts of God’s character that other parts of Scripture clearly reveal to us.
Darwinian evolution presents its own problems. In more than one hundred years of intentional experimental breeding, scientists have only produced very small genetic variations. In no case did a wing just suddenly appear. The theory suggests that the weaker organisms give way to the stronger organisms and all organisms are constantly adapting but what is the advantage of one-fourth of a wing, or one-half? Wouldn’t it get in the way and cause the organism growing it to be “unfit” for survival when a fully-developed organism comes to challenge it? How did that other organism reach its fully-developed state if not by skipping the intermediate states and suddenly growing the wing (or other part), something that, as stated above, science has been unable to duplicate and seems highly improbable.
Darwin’s theory also suggests that there are “intermediary types” of organisms—like a half-bird half-fish creature in the middle of its transformation from a fish to a bird yet no fossil records have been found to confirm this. But the most ridiculous portion of evolutionary theory is how life began in the first place. Evolutionary theory would have one believe that life began in an act of randomness greater than the same person winning the lottery 10 times in a row….not just any 10 times….10 times in a row. I know we’ve all come close.
Why science tries to disprove the one book in history that has never been wrong and tries to make humans feel insignificant is crafty work of the enemy, taking away moral absolutes and causing monsters like Hitler to attempt to speed up natural selection.
Many evangelicals believe there was a gap between Gen 1:1-2 where an earlier creation existed but the Bible never mentions this. Evangelicals also disagree on the age of the earth. With gaps in Biblical genealogies and scientific discoveries, this is understandable. There are two views, old-earth (the earth is 4,500,000,000 years old) and young-earth (10,000-20,000). Scripturally, both views are accurate but scientific evidence leans to the old-earth because if God created a mature earth, with living trees that would have taken years to grow, and the light from the stars in the sky (which would take many, many years to reach earth), why did he create fossils that are millions of years old but to deceive us? Scripture teaches us God is truth so the fossils must be that age because they serve no other purpose (unlike the trees or stars mentioned above). There are also questions about whether the “days” of creation were actual days or ages. Since the Bible is not clear and the original word for “day” is used in other places in Scripture for both “day” and “age”, it is unknown.
My name is Richard Smolenski and I am a theologian in training. I have an M.A. in Christian Apologetics from
Young earth creationists do not believe that God created fossils that are millions of years old. That is a caricature promoted by evolutionists. To be sure, there are some uninformed Christians out there that do believe that such things were produced as a test of faith, but they are a very small minority. I know of no creationist organization that teaches such an absurdity.
Dating fossils entails making many assumptions, including the idea that the processes operating today have not changed in billions of years of history. This is also known as uniformitarianism. If a global catastrophe such as the Flood of Noah’s day did actually occur, then dating methods that attempt to date things older than that will inevitably come up with wrong dates.
The dates provided by different techniques give different dates, sometimes varying by millions of years. The date that fits most closely with the scientist’s presumptions is the one that is chosen when this occurs. One might argue that since all of the dating methods give ages of millions of years it must be so, but I would argue that with an error rate of +/- millions of years they can’t be trusted at all.
All dating methods also assume that the original quantity is known. If you go into a room and see a guy peeling potatoes, and as he peels them he puts them in a basket, you could watch him and see how long it takes him to peel a potato. Then you could look in the basket and see how many potatoes are in there, and you could determine how long he’s been peeling potatoes, right? Wrong. What if when he started peeling the potatoes there were already several in the basket? You’d have no way of accurately calculating how long he’s been peeling potatoes just by looking at the number of potatoes in the basket. The same goes for these radioisotopic dating methods. Scientists assume they know how much of an isotope was present at the beginning, something that can never be proven.
Check out ICR’s RATE project for a scholarly opinion:
http://www.icr.org/rate/