The creation of the stars, the earth, and life are miracles that cannot be explained without a creator. After showing this scientifically I indicate how they were created by God over six eras.
Nearly all physicists, including me, now believe that the universe was created in a huge explosion, termed the ‘big bang’, which occurred about twelve billion years ago. Although physicists know a great deal about the state of the universe only seconds after the big bang, they cannot explain why it occurred. Nevertheless they believe that ‘space’ exploded to make the universe. If space can explode, this can only be by the power of God.
Space is supposed to have sailed along for eternity, and then for some strange reason, exploded into something. This implies that on the day of the big bang there must have been something different about nothing. It must surely be that God caused the explosion that created the universe.
Some try to get around the difficulty of creation by saying that time did not exist before the big bang. This misinterprets Einstein's theory of relativity by confusing the existence of time with the measurement of time. Before the universe was created clocks may not have existed nor the means to make them tick, but time still proceeded.
For time to be measured both matter and motion are necessary. Even if the mechanism of motion in our universe was created with the universe, there was still time before. Humans measure time by comparing one motion with another, for example the time of day with the motion of a clock. But even if all the clocks in the universe froze, God could still be working. The scientists who say all time was created with the universe have an emu's eye view of everything.
The alternative theory: that the matter of the universe is infinitely old is also unacceptable, because it would have grown cold. Therefore one way or another, scientific theory needs the existence of an all powerful God. For these reasons and others, many physicists (like myself) do believe in the existence of God.
The existence of a creator is also apparent from the design of the universe. For life to exist, the laws of physics must be tailored almost perfectly, and this is infinitely improbable without an intelligent and powerful creator. One example of this is in the values of the intrinsic constants that determine the strengths of the forces of gravity and heat. As stars burn, the force of gravity contracts them while the force of heat expands them. For there to be both large stars and small stars in abundance, the ratio of the intrinsic constants that determine these forces must be a precise number to one part in ten thousand billion billion billion. This precision is equivalent to saying that the mass of the earth is determined to a fraction of a grain of sand.
Large stars are necessary to make heavy elements. Our bodies are made up of the remnants of large stars which exploded and dispersed their products to our solar system. Small stars like our sun are necessary because only small stars burn slowly enough and stably enough to maintain a suitable environment for life.
Evolution supposedly involved two steps: first a mutation to a more advanced organism; and then selection of that organism by the environment (natural selection). A fundamental problem, which is overlooked by the proponents of evolution, is that most mutations, even if they are a step in the right direction, will not be naturally selected until they add up to make something useful. In order to achieve some useful improvement there would normally need to be a large number of correct mutations. The probability of these all occurring for significant steps in evolutionary history is often close to zero, even in the life of the universe of twelve billion years.
To illustrate what I have said, let us take a step in the supposed evolution of the human eye. Evolutionists say that the eye started off with a few cells which could determine the difference between light and dark, and eventually evolved to differentiate shape, etc. But the point that they deliberately play down is that at some stage major features arose. I will take the addition of colour vision to black and white as an example of such a major feature.
For this step, first of all there need to be cells spread all over the retina of the eye which, when struck by light of only a certain wave length have a chemical reaction that sends an electrical signal along some strands of the optic nerve to the brain. The brain must then recognise this signal as indicating a different colour to the black and white signals coming from the same location.
The structures of the eye which recognise colours are cones, and those which differentiate only black and white are rods. Not only did the cones, and the cone recognition area of the brain need to evolve, but also a means of wiring the cones to the brain, so that the signals didn't get mixed up with the signals from the rods.
Now the evolution of cones on the retina would be useless unless there had previously evolved a separate wiring mechanism to the brain and a separate mapping system on the brain. But these would not have evolved because there was no advantage to the animal to have these before colour cone detectors existed.
This argument illustrates the point that one mutation is of no use. Only a whole system of logically connected mutations, which combine to make a system, could possibly be of use. Natural selection would not operate unless there are sufficient numbers of mutations to create such a system, but in general this is so improbable as to be effectively impossible.
Not only will a few steps in this chain of mutations not produce anything useful, but they would most likely be positively harmful. Perhaps they would cause a cell to produce a protein for which the cell has no use. As an analogy, in computer programming, adding a subroutine may be helpful, but half a subroutine causes a computer malfunction.
The mathematical basis for this argument is as follows. Heredity is determined by genes, which are composed of DNA. DNA is like a spiral ladder, which in humans has 3 billion rungs. These rungs consist of bases, and may be of four types. It is the variation in the sequence of these bases that determines a person's eye colour, hair colour, etc.
If evolution were to have occurred it means that the sequence of these bases changed. Although this does happen, to add some useful new complexity to an organism means an enormous number of precise changes, which I will show to be virtually impossible.
There are two conditions that must be met when considering such probabilities:
First: That enough bases can change in the relevant stretch of DNA, without damaging other vital DNA.
Second: When such bases change, they change in the correct way.
The first factor involves both biological and mathematical concepts and is extremely complex to calculate. Therefore, as the best way to disprove a theory is to give it every chance, I will assume that the first condition is perfectly met, and will consider only the second condition.
Because there are four base types, the probability that a base in a mutating segment changes correctly is one in four. To replace two bases with another two correct bases has a probability of one in four squared (1/16). To correctly obtain a new set of three bases has a probability of one in four cubed (1/64) and so on. The table shows the probabilities of obtaining correct new sequences.
| Number of New Bases | Probability |
| 1 | 1/4 |
| 2 | 1/16 |
| 3 | 1/64 |
| 4 | 1/256 |
| 5 | 1/1024 |
| 10 | 1/1,048,576 |
| 20 | 1/1,099,511,628,000 |
| 40 | 1/1,208,925,820,000,000,000,000,000 |
| 50 | 1/1,267,650,600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 |
Even the extremely remote chance of 50 bases changing in a systematic way would not do much. It might be sufficient to change the colour of one's eyes, but it would not be sufficient to add the ability to detect colour vision. When one considers that there are 3 billion bases in human DNA, the replacement of 50 bases changes only one part in 60 million, which is negligible. By way of comparison it would take fifty such bits of information to produce 12 letters in computer code.
There is a correspondence between the inverse of the probability of a mutation and the number of individuals that must exist to allow that mutation to be likely. The number of humans that have ever been born in all history would probably be less than ten billion. If we assume, with the biologists, that man has evolved from apes and their ancestors, we could increase this number to perhaps a trillion. From the table this corresponds to the inverse of the probability of a correct mutation of 20 bases. This would be about the most significant mutation in human evolutionary history on a given strand of DNA. So there have been too few individuals in the history of the earth to allow significant evolutionary steps. (The age of the universe is about 12,000,000,000 years.)
Perhaps 100 years ago they did not understand the complexity of life, but there is no excuse today to persist with this simplistic theory of evolution by random mutation and natural selection.
Although this mathematical argument is sufficient to completely refute the possibility of Darwinian evolution, the assumptions I have made are very generous to it. More realistic assumptions would put it in a worse light still.
A computer model shown on television, which supposedly demonstrated that evolution is mathematically possible, was an exercise in futility. It assumed what it was supposed to prove; namely that selectable mutations occur. The inescapable conclusion is that God has guided evolution, by altering the DNA of life.
But there may have been some more limited evolution within species. It has recently been discovered that many of our genes are latent, inactive. Perhaps when God created the DNA of a species He created also latent DNA which could be switched on or off by genetic recombinations. Hence when a species changes in some minor way this is not primarily due to new DNA being written into the genetic code by a complex set of mutations. Rather it is due to a segment of complex DNA, which was previously dormant, being switched on by a new genetic recombination or perhaps by a simple mutation in some cases.
Unfortunately some Christians have thought it necessary to be apologetic about the first chapter of the bible, because of some perceived difficulties. But a perceived difficulty only disproves the bible if there is 100% certainty of all of the following factors: translation; interpretation; and science or history. Even a 1% imperfection in these factors may lead to there being hundreds of supposed biblical errors about which the ‘scholars’ are 99% sure the bible is wrong. This will still be the case though the originally inspired word of God, the bible is 100% accurate. So then, an examination of biblical infallibility must not just look for problems to use as an excuse to damn the bible. Rather it should compare the number of errors (supposed) with what would be expected if the bible was, or was not, the word of God.
The argument, with which I will prove that the first chapter of Genesis is God's word, is its correlation with modern science in terms of the order of events. This is too close to be coincidental. Even though I am guided by modern science in my interpretation of Genesis, the probability of being able to obtain correlation would be infinitely remote, had not Genesis been inspired by God. To emphasise this, one only has to look at ancient myths of other cultures, such as the earth being borne upon giant tortoises.
To obtain any sensible sort of correlation, we must understand that the Hebrew word ‘yom’ translated ‘day’ in Genesis can also mean other segments of time. I believe that the six yoms correspond to six eras, each of millions or billions of years. During these eras, God changed the form of life by replacing one type with another. This change in life over the millions of years was not by random evolution, but was by the miraculous power of God, and the history of what God did is preserved in the fossil record.
The most important truth of the Bible is that God created the universe and life. When He created these things is less important
Most scientists used to believe, as did both Newton and Einstein, that the universe had always existed. Then in 1929 Hubble discovered that the universe was expanding, leading scientists to the almost inescapable conclusion that the universe had begun in a giant explosion ten or twenty billion years ago and has been expanding ever since. However, Christians always knew that there was a beginning to the creation according to Genesis 1:1: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
In what must have been a somewhat unusual process, the solar system arose from one, or two interacting clouds of gas, one rich in elements from a supernova explosion.
The earth started to form by dust particles sticking together to form larger particles which continually aggregated to form meteorites which stuck together to form eventually what are called ‘planetesimals’. As the planetesimals grew, gravity started attracting more material to make the planetesimals larger. Although this process began before the sun ignited this is probably not why the earth is described as dark in Genesis 1:2 as this verse probably refers to a later stage after the earth had grown more. The sun was mostly formed and had ignited after 550 thousand years and the planetesimals continued to collide to form a larger mass that continually grew by bombardment with meteorites to form the earth. The earth took between 10 million and 100 million years to form.
One of the two most likely scientifically held theories is that at an early stage the earth was surrounded by a dense atmosphere of hydrogen and helium (same composition as the sun) several hundred times thicker than the earth's present atmosphere. This atmosphere was also full of dust from meteorite collisions, which would have prevented sunlight from reaching the surface of the earth in the same way as the ocean is dark one mile below the surface. Thus we have an explanation for Genesis 1:2: darkness was upon the face of the deep.
The bombardment of meteorites would have generated heat which would have been trapped by the thick atmosphere acting as a blanket. This would have caused the temperature of the earth to heat up sufficiently to melt most materials. Thus the earth would have been molten and featureless. As the word translated as ‘waters’ in Genesis 1:2 can also refer to the molten state we have an explanation of Genesis 1:2: The earth was without form, and void . . . And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
It is my belief that God made the solar system in the easiest way for us to understand, which means that as far as practicably possible He used the laws of nature. Nevertheless, science and chance alone cannot explain the creation. Therefore God's active involvement is necessary. To what degree the dice were thrown carefully at the initial creation of the universe and to what degree God actively intervened during the subsequent formation of the earth is difficult to say, except that the words: the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters seem to imply God's continued intervention. It is easier to build something gradually, correcting errors as they occur, than to get everything perfect initially. Although this is a human concept, it is likely that God created all things gradually as His word implies. I believe, as other scientists do, that the earth is 4,500 million to 5,000 million years old.
The solar wind (particles streaming away from the sun) dissipated the earth's thick opaque atmosphere when the sun was in its early ‘T Tauri’ stage when the solar wind was much stronger than today. Only then could light from the sun reach the surface of the earth. Thus we read: And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. (Genesis 1:3-5)
The words translated ‘evening’ and ‘morning’ can also mean ‘ending of the day’ and ‘beginning of the day’ with possible metaphorical usage . So in the context of Genesis they can mean beginning of an era and ending of an era. They imply that one task was completed to a certain degree during a certain ‘yom’ and its action closed before the commencement of the next phase during the next ‘yom’. However, I do not think the Genesis record is comprehensive or that the overlapping of days is completely excluded.
After the first atmosphere had been lost as previously described, the second atmosphere of the earth was formed. Scientists believe that it was formed primarily by ‘impact degassing’. This is the process during which a meteorite hits the earth, melts and the gaseous component are liberated. Some biologists, desperate to find a godless hypothesis for the origin of life, have surmised that these gases were largely methane, ammonia and hydrogen, in order to create some supposed pre-biotic soup. But modern science suggests the contrary, that the atmosphere originally was similar to the volcanic gases of today, comprising mostly water vapour, with the balance mostly of carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide. This second atmosphere was produced in the first 500 million years of the earth's formation.
The water vapours condensed to form the oceans, with some remaining in the air as clouds, presumably very thick clouds. Thus the next stage of the earth's evolution was completed which was the creation of the firmament (atmosphere), which divided the waters above the firmament (clouds) from the waters below the firmament (oceans).
This is recorded in Genesis 1:6-8: And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
In this verse the word ‘heaven’ means the atmosphere, as is evident from verse 20, which describes the birds flying in ‘heaven’. (The bible refers to three heavens: first the atmosphere; second the starry heavens; and thirdly the presence of God and of the angelic hosts.)
Mountain building is believed by scientists to have been a gradual process. It is therefore most likely according to science, and most certain according to the bible, that long ago the earth was much flatter. The waters must have condensed and formed oceans before the surface of the earth was irregular enough for major land areas to emerge from the ocean depths. A flat earth would have been completely covered with water about a mile deep. When land appeared it is thought that the continents grew slowly as the earth's crust chemically differentiated from the molten mantle below. The oldest crust is 3800 million years old (800 million years after the earth's formation). This crust then buckled in repeated mountain building activities.
So it is scientifically logical to believe that the next stage in the earth's evolution was the appearance of dry land from the oceans as the earth buckled. It is recorded in Genesis 1:9,10: And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. Geologists believe that the location of the continents today is different to that of the past and that at least at one stage the continents were joined together.
The next major stage in the earth's evolution was the appearance of plants (Bacteria are not mentioned). Plants were necessary for two reasons: firstly to create the oxygen for the animals to breathe; and secondly as food for the animals. Although to a classification biologist one would describe in sequential detail the origin of all the plant species, some of which post dated the animals, to a child one would only say, ‘The plants came first to make the oxygen for the animals to breath and the food for the animals to eat’. This is the message of the bible. The first oxygen producing organisms appeared about 2,700 million years ago, although they are not mentioned specifically in the bible.
The plants described in Genesis 1:11-13 first appeared about 560 million years ago. The Hebrew words to describe these plants are very general words, which cover both the simple forms which appeared at this time as well as later more complex forms. (Many bible translations may not be completely accurate on this point. Bibles are translated by those skilled in theology, not biology.) The simple forms did pre-date animal life. Thus God's record in Genesis 1:11-13 is true when: God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so . . . And the evening and the morning were the third day.
To say that the sun, moon and stars were created after the earth, or even worse, to say that they are only 6,000 years old is completely inconsistent with a multitude of scientific observations, all based on fairly simple logic. Therefore we should try to seek an alternative explanation of Genesis, which is still a plausible interpretation of the scriptures. There is such an interpretation and it is this: During the fourth ‘era’ sun, moon and stars appeared in the sky when the clouds cleared, even though they had been created billions of years previously.
This is an acceptable interpretation of Scripture because in Genesis 1:16 the word usually given as made is better translated as ‘had made’ as it is of the verb form connoting completed action. This is how it is translated in Genesis 2:2 (KJV).
This leads to the following translation of Genesis 1:14-19:
And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God (had) made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he (had) made the stars also . . . And God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
The sun, which is about the same age as the earth, does not remain static, but undergoes a process of continual evolution. God ordained that it would always be at the right temperature to support the necessary life forms. When, in the past, the sun was cooler than today, God ordained it that this coincided with more carbon dioxide in the air which warmed the planet. On the fourth day, the sun and the stars had been prepared to exactly the right stage of their evolution.
The lights in the firmament of heaven give a degree of regularity to our lives, which helps us to order our lives sensibly, and to plan.
Fishes originated about 460 million years ago, sharks about 380 million years ago and amphibians about 370 million years ago. These are the abundance of living creatures with which the waters abounded, and which predated life on land.
The word, which I have given as ‘monsters’, has a variety of translations such as: great fish, sea monster, or any reptile or animal of large proportions. In the King James Version it is translated as ‘whale’ but this is almost certainly incorrect, as whales did not appear until later according to the geological record. I believe that ‘crocodile’ could also be an acceptable translation, or perhaps their relatives, the dinosaurs, which originated about 200 million years ago and for which the ancient Hebrews had no specific word.
Today children learn that the age of dinosaurs was replaced by the age of mammals, but if the bible says the same, the petty minds of the taxonomists (biological classificationists) start to find fault because of some trivial number of archaic mammal fossils which appeared during the age of the dinosaurs. Small reptiles, which were created on this fifth day, are not specifically referred to, perhaps because of their insignificance.
The first birds also appeared 150 million years ago, although according to the fossil record they took a further 100 million years to become well established. I wonder, however, whether some of the earlier birds were not preserved as fossils.
So we can accept that the Genesis record of this era of creation is consistent with the fossil record.
The sixth day is the era of the mammals, and the fossil record agrees with the bible in that the mammals generally came last. Those mammals described in Genesis 1 certainly did.
The Hebrew words used to describe the animals created on the sixth day are somewhat ambiguous; for example the same word ‘khahee’ is used to describe some of the animals created both on the sixth day and on the fifth day, when it must have a different meanings. Also the word ‘remes’, which is translated as creeping thing and which can apply to reptiles, can also be used for such animals as the hare. This is the most likely translation here, as hares appeared 38 million years ago, which is, I believe, during the sixth ‘day’. The word translated as ‘cattle’ can also include other animals such as lions.
The biblical record of the sixth day is given in Genesis 1:24,25: And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth, after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
When we interpret ambiguous Hebrew words to fit with the fossil record and with common sense we see that the sixth day covers the most recent 50 million years. In this period, according to the fossil record, the following groups began to flourish: rabbits; carnivores; elephants; primates; and cattle, all of which is consistent with the biblical record.
Forgetting for the moment about the so-called ape-men, man appeared last of all, both according to the fossil record and according to Genesis. Only after the creation of all else do we read: God created man. (Genesis 1:27) Then: God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam . . . and he took one of his ribs. And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from the man, made he a woman. (Genesis 2:21,22)
Over the last few pages I have sought to confirm that palaeontology, geology, astronomy, atmospheric physics and biology confirm that the Genesis record was inspired by God, because the order of events is correct. As God said in Genesis 2:4: These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.
Although over the course of scientific history man has discovered the natural laws which supply causes, this does not imply that at the most fundamental level, a creator is unnecessary as a final cause. At this level science has the means to prove its own inadequacy, and so should defer to religion.