I want to state, first and foremost, that this post is not a place to debate Evolution. we already have posts like this. I decided to make this post because of some confusion that I saw in a post on homosexuality about what exactly evolution is. What comprises evolution, and what is not, what points of evolution exclude the biblical account of creation and which could coincide with it peacefully, what has been observed, and what is merely speculated. I wanted a place we could work together and comparatively set Creationism beside Evolutionism, and see how scientific observations work within each of these models. I'd like to post a big long thing right now with what I've seen and researched, but I have to go to church!

Evolution says sun before earth, land before sea, atmosphere before sea, stars before earth, land animals before trees, reptiles before man, land mammals before whales, dinosaurs before birds, sun before plants (which boggles my mind) and most importantly they claim death before man. Genesis claims the exact opposite on all of these.

I'm not sure what exactly you were looking for here but I'm anxious to see your long post :) This topic excites me. If there is something I got backwards or wrong in the homosexual thread in regards to this particular debate please feel free to set me straight. :)

When attending Bible school, I often got frustrated by my peers who were very thirsty for knowledge about the Bible, but then as we started to tie what the Bible says into every day observable life, many of them fell apart and quit trying. One specific area was in our creation science class.

Our creation science teacher made a statement that is completely true and needs examination: "All scientists, be they creationist or evolutionist are looking at the same observations and facts. What is different is the assumptions we carry to these facts and therefore, the way we interpret them."

At the end of class he got railed with criticism for being "unbiblical" I frankly found his thoughts incredibly intriguing, He was a meteorologist by profession with a PHD in Geology, he works with the Institute for Creation Research and his specialization there is the flood. Specifically what changed with the global flood we find in Genesis.

He split people into two very nice, clean camps. "The ones that believe that Genesis tells the whole literal truth as the book implies that it does, and those that believe it does not."

In the one camp, (which I ascribe to) we have people that say God created everything there is from nothing in seven literal 24-hour periods, in a specific order, and they work together. At this point we did not have the same physics set we see today, much of that changed at the fall and had further massive, rapid, and cataclysmic changes during the flood. Some of the biggest hurdles to this camp are such issues as starlight and time.

In the other camp, we have theistic evolutionists, evolutionists, and a wide variety of other beliefs, which either quote Genesis as metaphorical or outright creative mythical writing. Some of the hurdles for this camp involve the conservation of matter and energy, diffusion, and the fossil record.

What I find is this: If we observe something happening in the world and it happens predictably and patterned, then it does indeed happen according to principles that we can use to predict future behavior. This is the basic thought process used in the scientific method. We run across a question, we research the question and surrounding phenomenon, we make an educated guess to answer our question (a theory), we then devise a way to test this guess (experiment). We run our test, observe the results and compare our results to our expected results. This will often, in turn, force us to rethink our theory and re-run an experiment, or devise an entirely new one. Over the course of experiments one may find a theory that principally works predictably and repeatably to the point we will call it an established principal or law, such things as diffusion, fluid flow, gravity, inertia, all fall into these categories.

The theory of evolution in the strictest sense may not be considered a theory. In many cases, for an idea to be considered a theory it must be testable, yielding observable results. Evolution does not afford us this, as in the best case for the theory the results occur over such drastically long periods, or infrequently at long intervals to the point they will never be practically observable to a human being.

And here I will dive into the messy discussion of macro and micro evolution.
Evolutionists like to attack the literal Genesis camp here, because both sides have a fun time confusing what qualifies as macro evolution and which is micro. Macro is big evolution, resulting in a generation of a new "kind' as used in Genesis. This may not be a species, I would expect the generation to occur above the genus level to be considered macro evolution. This kind of generation is claimed to have occurred regularly yielding us plant animal and fungal kingdoms as well as bridging the gap between reptiles, amphibians and mammals, as well as regularly crossing land/water barriers. Slow changes amassing over time is usually the motto of the Evolutionist here, however they have developed the idea of something called punctuated equilibrium. This idea states that evolution accelerates rapidly for short periods of time thus accounting for gaps in the fossil record and an incredible lack of transitional forms between a plethora of stages claimed to be linked together. one example of a missing stage is fish to amphibians or anything to insects and arthropods.

Generally speaking micro evolution is only defined by the strictly genesis camps because the other camp sees micro evolution as the building block for macro evolution and argues with us constantly that these two processes are identical. The difference is crucial: Micro evolution is observable, it is a natural variation in genetic diversity within different kinds, and was fully intended when God initially created the world. What Darwin observed on the Galapagos is an example of micro evolution. A more stark example of microevolution would be the breeding of dogs, cats, plants, and cattle. If you head to the grocery store how many varieties of apples do you see? Dozens! some are sweet some are tart, we have red, yellow and green. But they are all apples, we can even breed together similar plants, like oranges and tangerines, but they are still fruits! Microevolution will not lead to the generation of new "Kinds" (in the Genesis sense) and it always presents a reduction in genetic code. You can line-breed certain pie apples down to become very similar to the "red delicious" but you cannot reverse line-breed it. We see this in the modern perennial sweet pea, which has beautiful large blooms, but often no scent. You cannot reverse breed to regain the scent, the genetics have gone. Just like you cannot re-breed siamese cats into tabbies, though you can breed tabbies into siamese. These are observed genetic traits that man can and has used for centuries to encourage traits in our domesticated plants and animals. The food you eat and the clothing you wear is all a result of artificial or human selection to substitute the "natural" selection which is active in micro-evolution. If humans quit taking care of the world many of our most popular crops and pets would be utterly unequipped to deal with the wild, un-subdued world, and would promptly die out. Examples of this are found in bombed out cities, in a mere year of warfare where humans quit caring for pets nearly every dog will be coyote to wolf sized (small dogs aren't mobile enough, large dogs tend to have health problems) and almost every cat is a tabby.

Creation here is the spontaneous generation of all there is, and it is often under-complicated by the opponents. When God created the world, according to the leading theories of quantum physics, he generated energy within space that he divided into eleven dimensions to express the energy as vibrating strings, rings, or bands which ultimately comprise everything we see. This is covered in Genesis 1:3 and 4, Creation was likely generated with a controlled kind of entropy which did not act uniformly and predictably across the board, but most statements in this area are pure speculation. What we do know is it was good, things were created according to their kind with an intent of controlled genetic diversity over which man was given dominion, and continues to exercise to this day (though likely in a far more impotent form than we initially had) God creates plants before the sun, he likely provided the light for them on this single day they existed without the sunshine, giving an interesting symbolism of everything else to come: all creation is sustained through him, and is not self-sustaining. The issue of starlight and time (if the stars are created after light, and the earth, why do we see light today) is explained either by God stretching light to the earth from the stars at their creation, or, my favorite, that earth exists near the center of the universe, which is not endless, but in fact has a center of gravity and therefore the theory of relativity offers up options allowing light to get here in less than the linear distance of light years, specifically if God created the stars nearer to the earth on a trajectory away from them, thus we have a decreasing intensity gravity well which would actually slow down the speed of light over time, which has other physical implications as well. I like this explanation because there's some math to support it, as well as observations like red shift to support an expanding universe.

One of the main points I'd like to make here is that, much like Michael Faraday I see science as a way to pursue God. I am often attacked for this belief, both from those who study science and reject Christ, and from those who accept religion and reject the idea that we can see God more through his creation.

The ideas of genetic variation, and change over time are not thoughts and concepts that are unique to the evolutionary viewpoint, indeed the genesis account both calls for and insists on much greater change over far less time than the evolutionary camp accounts for, furthermore, this change makes sense in light of modern genetic study. Don't let people fool you, while chimpanzees and humans have 98% of their genetics in common, our friends , the ravens routinely have up to 7% of their genetics completely dissimilar, further evidence of the incredible variation available within different kinds. Our ideas of classification and taxonomy are currently still based largely on phenotypical differences and not an any true genetic knowledge of the members of these groups. I believe and hope that continued genetic research will help us to see the "Kinds" that God laid out at the beginning of time

The idea that genetic traits vary over time is not exclusionary to the genesis account and does not belong only to evolution. that kind of backwards thinking, that genesis says nothing has changed from the beginning, allows the uneducated among us to make fools of all of us, and gives the secularist world ammunition when constructing a straw-man of the Christian which they proceed to rip to shreds before themselves saying "That settles this matter, nothing but straw and clothing the whole of it!" When in fact, Christains can pursue all things in science not fearing a single thing we will find, because we know the one who created it all.

The difference in genetics is what provides you with the food you eat (which costs less than anywhere in the world) the clothes you wear, and eventually, even the fuel you use to run your cars. It is what accounts for your hair and eye color, your likelihood of developing Alzheimer or cancer, and is what makes that unborn embryo just conceived in his mother a brand new human never seen before, and not at all a chicken, reptile, or cat. It is also fully supported and expected when we read the Bible, and does not require millions of years or one kind of creature or plant turning into a different kind. It requires only a few simple tests and a couple of weeks in some cases to observe the phenomenon falsely labeled as "survival of the fittest" which I would more correctly like to describe as "Diversity within kinds"

To speak on the six literal days issue I'd like to add this.

The doubt of an account of six literal days has nothing to do with the Bible. Sadly people have lost the ability to defend their faith as 1 Peter 3:14 commands and many have bought into this lie that there is a separation between religion and science. Evolution has been taught so dogmatically that people start trying to fit their religion into what the world has said science is.

There are serious reasons why we should trust the Bible and God's inerrant word on this idea of six literal days:
1. Here's a quote from AiG.org about Genesis and six literal days:
The Hebrew word for day in Genesis chapter 1 is the word yom. It is important to understand that almost any word can have two or more meanings, depending on context. We need to understand the context of the usage of this word in Genesis chapter 1.*

Respected Hebrew dictionaries, like the Brown, Driver, Briggs lexicon, give a number of meanings for the word yom depending upon context. One of the passages they give for yom's meaning an ordinary day happens to be Genesis chapter 1. The reason is obvious. Every time the word yom is used with a number, or with the phrase 'evening and morning', anywhere in the Old Testament, it always means an ordinary day. In Genesis chapter 1, for each of the six days of creation, the Hebrew word yom is used with a number and the phrase, 'evening and morning'. There is no doubt that the writer is being emphatic that these are ordinary days.
2. By excepting millions of years we have a huge doctrinal problem. The Bible is very specific that death entered the world through sin, by the first human beings. If there were millions of years of death and suffering before the fall then the whole foundation of the message of the Cross falls apart.
3. God could have created everything in zero time if he wanted to but there is a specific reason why he took 6 literal days, Exodus 20:11.

I'll add more later to the other subjects when I get a chance. Good discussion topic.

I am pretty conservative, so I try not to jump into every piece of "sound" evidence evolutionists come up with, but I am at least acknowledging that they have brought up some interesting points. For one, the age of the Earth and the Universe. It really does seem like universe has been around for a while, and I am not sure if I would agree with the argument that God made the universe to look old, although I still consider that a possibility too.

The other thing is that the "days" of creation don't necessarily have to be 24 hour periods. It seems odd that it would take God exactly 24 hours to create something. I would think He would either do it instantly, or do it gradually over a long period of time (this is where evolution might come in, to a limit). I'm not saying God just did one thing and let everything unfold. But I think its possible that formation of the Earth took a long time, and since God has no sense of time (I think there are verses about that), then why not say that creation of the earth took millions of years? That has nothing to do with what comes after. I believe that God made humans instantly (well, one human, Adam, then Eve) not through evolution. And as for animals, I think he made lots of varieties of animals, not just one animal that evolved into all the others. He might have just made a "cat" that became a lion, tiger, bobcat (etc.), but not a fish that became a reptile.

I'm not smart enough to really make case and point on either side, but those are the only ways I can integrate evolution and creation. But I do see that the more we make claim to evolution being a factor, the less we make claim to God being a factor. It just seems to be the mentality when we humans try to process it.

I just want to give you some responses here in case you are ever asked these questions.

I am pretty conservative, so I try not to jump into every piece of "sound" evidence evolutionists come up with, but I am at least acknowledging that they have brought up some interesting points. For one, the age of the Earth and the Universe. It really does seem like universe has been around for a while, and I am not sure if I would agree with the argument that God made the universe to look old, although I still consider that a possibility too.

First I would ask myself why does the earth supposedly look old? And how old does the earth really look? What do we have to compare this too? Nothing, because we were not present in the past and we have no idea what a young earth really looks like. Assumptions have to be made first in order to determine if in fact the earth really is old.

The other thing is that the "days" of creation don't necessarily have to be 24 hour periods. It seems odd that it would take God exactly 24 hours to create something. I would think He would either do it instantly, or do it gradually over a long period of time (this is where evolution might come in, to a limit). I'm not saying God just did one thing and let everything unfold. But I think its possible that formation of the Earth took a long time, and since God has no sense of time (I think there are verses about that), then why not say that creation of the earth took millions of years? That has nothing to do with what comes after. I believe that God made humans instantly (well, one human, Adam, then Eve) not through evolution. And as for animals, I think he made lots of varieties of animals, not just one animal that evolved into all the others. He might have just made a "cat" that became a lion, tiger, bobcat (etc.), but not a fish that became a reptile.

You are very right God could have created the earth in any way he wanted to. After all he is God. However, I think this is where a clarification needs to be made between evolution (molecules to man evolution) and natural selection (variations within a animal or plant kind). Natural selection is a scientific fact. We have observed to date an abundance of variations within each kind of animal and plant. However, a change from one specie into another has never been observed. Even though artificial selections (such as animal breeders) produces a huge variation within each kind we have never observed a dog turning into something other than a dog. A lion can breed with a tiger and you still get some variation of a "cat kind." Cross breeding is not possible. It doesn't produce one living thing. So I think you are extremely smart because you have pretty much figure this out. That is, that we do see change (natural selection) but not evolution (molecules to man). This speaks the the awesome complexity that God has created us with, the ability to adapt to various changes in order to survive. That is an awesome testament to our Creator.

On the issue of 6 literal days. The Bible gives us the principles in which we must interpret the Bible. 2 Corinthians 4:2 and Proverbs 8:8–9 states:

Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God (2 Corinthians 4:2).

All the utterances of my mouth are in righteousness; There is nothing crooked or perverted in them. They are all straightforward to him who understands, And right to those who find knowledge (Proverbs 8:8–9).


God calls us to stick to a plain or straightforward reading of his Word. This means we accept poetry for poetry, history for history and so on. If God says he created the earth in six days why do we not believe him? He's God he can do whatever he wants and what he does is done perfectly, for a perfect purpose. The other reason why we should believe in six literal days is because God is an orderly God. He doesn't just do things for no apparent reason. Our entire relationship with God revolves around a 7 day week. It makes complete sense that he would create the world in 6 days and command rest on the seventh if in fact the Sabbath day was meant to be separated from the rest of the week as holy.

I hope this has helped some to clarify your questions.

I'm not smart enough to really make case and point on either side, but those are the only ways I can integrate evolution and creation. But I do see that the more we make claim to evolution being a factor, the less we make claim to God being a factor. It just seems to be the mentality when we humans try to process it.

Wrong! You are very smart and you have some very intelligent and necessary questions. These are all questions I had before I started really getting a grasp on this whole creation/evolution debate. I once use to believe that we evolved. Not anymore.

The other thing is that the "days" of creation don't necessarily have to be 24 hour periods. It seems odd that it would take God exactly 24 hours to create something. I would think He would either do it instantly, or do it gradually over a long period of time (this is where evolution might come in, to a limit). I'm not saying God just did one thing and let everything unfold. But I think its possible that formation of the Earth took a long time, and since God has no sense of time (I think there are verses about that), then why not say that creation of the earth took millions of years? That has nothing to do with what comes after. I believe that God made humans instantly (well, one human, Adam, then Eve) not through evolution. And as for animals, I think he made lots of varieties of animals, not just one animal that evolved into all the others. He might have just made a "cat" that became a lion, tiger, bobcat (etc.), but not a fish that became a reptile.


Thank you Whitness for handling the scriptural treatment of this comment. The short answer: Genesis, The bible SAYS the earth was created over 6 24 hour periods. So in order to believe otherwise, you must also believe the Bible is either mistaken, wrong, or not inspired in these portions. The writing of Genesis doesn't really leave you another option as it is written as a very matter-of-fact historical account, rather than poetry or prose, or even prophecy the places where we do find metaphor. I have no one at all asking me if in the book of ruth Moab was really moab and bethlehem was really bethlehem. It's written as an historical account and we take it on faith. Same thing with Genesis. This is the primary reason if you take the Bible on faith, you put yourself in a difficult position to say the writer of Genesis went out of his way to say day and "morning and evening" in order to imply billions of years.

Now, the Bible does not say it took God 24 full hours to complete each step, rather that he performed them in daily segments. I find the Bible uses a repetitive process of "And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light." then "Let there be X and it was X" and "Let there be Y and there was Y" I don't find it requiring 24 hours of God to do these things, I find them occurring instantaneously, and God takes a day to examine what he has made and declare it good. It's more like a man who builds a house and enjoys living there for a lifetime than a child who takes a full day to complete a puzzle. what I DO read is spontaneous existence and change, with God taking time to enjoy what he made, to glory in it, if you will.

Now your statement of God creating a kind of Cat that then differentiated, well that's a whole 'nother thing. This is actually highly acceptable and likely according to the Genesis account, as we find many felines can interbreed just fine. Same with Dogs. The difference is one of Time (The Bible claims a young earth through the days of Genesis, and then furthermore by the continuous lineage of humans that goes all the way to Christ) The Bible claims that it does not take millions of years to differentiate.

The implication from the Bible (through literal treatment of genesis days and continuous account of lineage) is that we are likely between the 7th and 8th millenia of creation.

It is perfectly possible that just a few thousand years is plenty! And I even run into the issue that depending on entropy 4 thousand years might be too long!

This is because when one breeds animals, you will NEVER see an increase in information. Latent information may become expressed (recessive traits) Information may become altered (mutation) and information can become "lost" (line breeding) But we do not add information. One might contend that Down's is more information, but it is not NEW information, it is the addition of information that already exists in that kind, and it is decidedly un-helpful to the organism. Mutation changes the information, but to come up with new useable information via mutation is highly unlikely. This is also OBSERVED as mutations are over 99% lethal. "Lost" information is what happens when a specific trait is developed because it is desirable. A Thought-experiment could be mice. We breed our mice and one of them is smaller. This smaller mouse in our environment is harder for predators to spot, and can squeeze into smaller spaces to get food. Eventually the predators pick off all of the larger mice, and only small mice remain. We will assume that for these mice, being smaller is a recessive gene. The mice are now unable to give birth to large mice! The code for large mice is lost in our eco-system and we actually have a reduction in diversity. Humans do this all the time when they develop breeds of animals.

As a literal-six-day-creationist I look at these genetic observations, and I find it not only likely but preferable to have a shorter time of diversity from "Go" These genetic observations say to me that animals and people are genetically most "fit" at their first copy and they lose information from there. Furthermore, thanks to mutations, we actually even have a level of information corruption, like your computer's hard drive, where given enough time the information will degrade to the point of being unusable.

The traditional stand of the evolutionist on these points is that given enough time, random mutations can produce usable genetic code. We just need enough mutations.

If I may break my own rule here and give a short rebuttal: "Genetics" is not randomly arranged information (like finding words in a paper typed by millions of chimps over millions of years) Genetic code is a huge amount of readable information: instructions which are capable of both producing and maintaining some of the most complex arrangements in the universe, including the Human Brain. It is also error-correcting, self checking, and redundant. I would just like to state for the record that if the SETI project found ANY signal which was 1/100,000th the complexity of DNA but contained it's attributes (a checksum, error-correction, instructional, redundant) it would immediately be assumed by any and everyone that we had just made contact with an intelligent being.

Biblically I see no room for billions of years, and Macro-evolution demands it. This is the shortest reason for the basic creationist/evolutionist time argument.

I hope to reply on the age of the earth soon, it's a really great question!

I'll give a REALLY short analysis with some resources

The two primary "proofs" for the old earth come from radio-Dating and distance to the stars with the speed of light. These have both been studied and addressed by the young earth camp. The young earth camp has in turn posed questions to the old earth camp which to my knowledge have gone unanswered, these are polonium Radio-Halos, and conflict between radio-dating age and dating using a helium diffusion through zircon crystal method.

for the creation side I'll give you a link to the RATE project.



And the book "Starlight and Time" by Russell Humphreys

http://www.amazon.com/Starlight-Time-Solving-Distant-Universe/dp/0890512027

I will say Both sides make considerable assumptions with their "proofs" and both rely on faith in those assumptions.

sorry, RATE link:
http://www.icr.org/article/new-rate-data-support-young-world/