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n his second epistle to the various Churches in Asia Minor, Peter writes: “With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.” In Genesis we read: On the first day He said “Let there be light,” and there was light. On the second day God separated the water under the vault from the water above it. On the third say he let the ground appear and the land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit, with seed in it, according to their kinds.
On the fourth day God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. On the fifth day God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind.
On the sixth day God created mankind in his own image, male and female. He said “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it — I give every green plant for food.”
By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so he rested from all the work of creating that he had done. Now I’ve summarized these passages to underscore that there was a sequence, these were “days” of epochal significance, Genesis was prose for creativity over time.
Now in light of this I must say that it frosts my petunias whenever I hear any debate, between believers and non-believers framed as one of Creation versus Evolution. That clearly suggests a misunderstanding of just what is meant by the word ‘evolution’. In Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language, evolution was defined as a noun stemming from the Latin term evolutio, which meant “The act of unfolding or unrolling.” In the very first definition offered, he wrote “A series of things unrolled or unfolded; as the evolution of ages.”
So where’s the controversy? The definition and etymology of evolution dovetails precisely with the Genesis account. What’s really at issue here is the idea of intelligent design and implementation versus mindless causation. Now anyone reading and accepting the Genesis account already understands something of the intelligence behind creation. We may even see it as God exerting evolutionary over-control.
The use of terms such as mindless causation may be an unfamiliar way of framing the debate, so I will borrow a theme from a popular comedian. Jeff Foxworthy became famous for his “You might be a redneck if . . .” jokes. Sooo, I’m going to ask you a question in that same Foxworthy style. Here goes: If you had an infinite number of rednecks riding around in an infinite number of pickup trucks, with an infinite number of shotguns, and shooting an infinite number of stop signs, would they eventually spell out all of the world’s great literature in braille? That, my friends, is what we mean when we say mindless causation.
Most of the arguments made by secularists are oversimplifications. They like to refer to the authoritarian church, that existed prior to the Enlightenment, in making their case. But the faithful of today recognize and embrace a Science, a Philosophy, and a Religion that are commensurate with the intellectual, societal, and cultural development of human kind. We believe Science is to facts, what Philosophy is to meanings, and what Religion is to Values. These essential parts within the intellectual disciplines are not mutually exclusive.
These are undisputed facts. In 1859, some 31 years after Webster’s 1828 dictionary was published, Charles Darwin published Origin of Species. On the Galapagos islands, he discovered several species of birds. He discovered that the different species of birds varied from island to island as did the food supply. What does this mean? Because some birds have ratchet like jaws that can break the shells of nuts, while others have long needle like beaks that can extract nectar from a delicate flower without crushing it; “every winged bird according to its kind” is what he witnessed. Point is, there is an ingenious food distribution system that supports a wide variety of wildlife on a small island.
What is the value proposition? God makes provision, that is more than adequate, for “everything that has the breath of life in it.”