04.15.08
Days of evolution?
Despite its widespread popularity, the claim presented by theistic evolutionists that Genesis 1 describes the correct order of evolution is quite easy to find flaws with. It’s not even necessary to debate about the Flood and the rate of fossilization and erosion. The simple order of events is quite enough, because the order of the creation days does not “easily fit”, but rather must be shoehorned in.
Day 1: God begins His creative act with water, and on the first day He adds light.
Evolution starts with the big bang, and it takes a very long time for the Earth to form. Earth certainly did not start out as water.
Day 2: God separates the waters into that below and that above, creating the sky.
Sure, evolution has the Earth going on to create its own atmosphere, but this is still after the formation of stars. At this point, Genesis does not have the stars formed yet.
Day 3: God creates land and plants.
Evolution has water arising from land, I think. Land plants are supposed to have come after aquatic life.
Day 4: God creates the extraterrestrial universe, including the sun, moon, and stars.
Evolution has the sun and stars forming before the Earth. I’ve heard the argument that God actually created the sun and stars first, and on day four He just withdrew a heavy layer of clouds and allowed these things to be seen. I’ll let the matter rest on your own reason.
Day 5: God creates aquatic life and birds.
Okay, evolution has aquatic animals coming first, I think (but also before plants). Birds, on the other hand, are out of order. They’re supposed to come after land animals.
Day 6: And here God creates land animals and finally humans.
Evolution has humans “coming on the scene” rather late as well, but what took the land animals so long?
When conversing with one theistic evolutionist, I was presented with the argument that the days of creation were not necessarily in the order in which they are written. We should then be scratching our heads as to why the days would be numbered in the Genesis record. But even if the days were in a different order, there were days on which two categories of the creation were created. Genesis has aquatic animals and birds being created together. Evolution requires that aquatic animals came first, then land animals, then birds. Day 6 would have to be squeezed into the middle of day 5 for this, but then another problem arises: man coming before birds. Well, let’s just merge days 5 and 6 and cut everything up to make it fit. That’ll work, right? We can also place day 4 before day 1. The order of water and land is still out of wack a little, but it works well enough. Oh, wait, I forgot that day 3 has plants before aquatic life. Have to cut out the plants part and stick it in our day 5/6. While were at it, we can stick the first part of day 3 before day 2. Never mind that it makes no sense for land to come out of water before there’s any water.
Boy, it’s hard to get all of this right. It’s almost as if God wrote Genesis 1 specifically to confound our attempts to reconcile it with evolution….
References and further reading:
http://creationwiki.org/index.php/Arguments_against_theistic_evolution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_evolution
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/biology/variationandinheritance/3evolutionrev8.shtml
