There are few passages in the Bible that has caused more controversy and debate than that of Genesis 1.  Everyone seems to have an opinion on this passage, and even among Christians, these opinions are hotly debated, often in a very unchristian-like manner.

We should thus ask ourselves what all the fuss is about, and whether it really matters.  Does it really matter whether the creation story given in Genesis 1 is scientifically correct, or verifiable, or literal, or even true?

In this article I would like to reason that the scientific accuracy of Genesis 1 is of utmost importance, even though this was never intended to be the purpose of the passage.  I am not going to attempt to demonstrate its scientific accuracy, but only point out why I think it is important.

The purpose of Genesis 1

Before we can even start to discuss this topic, we need to understand what is the original purpose of this passage.  As in any other piece of writing, the writer had a very definitive central message in mind, a message that will also make sense in the central message of the complete Bible.

Genesis 1 in the context of the central biblical message

So what is the central message of the Bible?  Below is a quick overview, given without attempting to explain the theology behind it.

1. God created man in His image, to be His representative on earth.
2. By sinning, Adam disqualified himself to be God’s representative. (God is holy and without sin, an image Adam could no longer uphold)
3. Since Adam was now a sinner, he could only become father to more sinners. Any and all people born out of Adam’s lineage would be sinners, not by their deeds, but by birth.  For this reason, no man will ever be made righteous before God through their works, because works has nothing to do with the fact that we are all sinners.  None of Adam’s children could ever qualify to be God’s representative on earth, as God intended Adam (and us) to be.
4. All the way back in Genesis 3:15, God already gives the first prophecy of the fact that He will make a plan to solve this problem.
5. The plan was, of course, for God Himself to come to earth, pay the dues for Adam’s sin in our place, and make it possible for us to be born-again.
   1. Since Jesus was born of a virgin (effectively having God as his Father), He was not born under Adam’s curse.
   2. Even though not being guilty of Adam’s sin, he paid the price therefore in our place, making it possible for us to be freed from Adam’s curse, but only by a NEW BIRTH.
   3. The concept of a new, spiritual birth is vitally important, since we became sinners by virtue of being Adam’s children. Only by being born out of our Heavenly Father can we ever be anything other than sinners.

Almost everything else in the Bible is commentary or details on this central story.  Think of the Exodus story, a beautiful explanation of how God intended to solve this problem.  Same is true if you consider the layout of the tabernacle, or the story of Rahab, or the offerings, etc.

Genesis 1 : Introduction to the greatest story ever told

Now, consider the story of Genesis 1 in this context.  Genesis 1 is the very first chapter, the introduction to the greatest story ever told.  Any writer who would be asked to write the very first chapter of this wonderful story, would certainly consider very, very carefully what he is going to write.  Mess this up, and the whole thing comes crashing down.

So in this context, Genesis 1 appears to give a very quick introduction of how we as human beings, as physical beings, came to be.  The fact of the matter is that we are flesh-and-bone beings, living in the physical world, and Genesis 1 tells us how we got here, and how we relate to the rest of the physical creation.  Genesis 2 onwards would go ahead to explain to us the spiritual aspects of our existence, but first we need to understand that we are not purely spiritual beings.  We are physical beings, and we were created by God and given a special place in the physical realm.

And this is the central message of Genesis 1, as seen from the context of the rest of the Bible.

Man’s place in the physical realm

To prove the point, consider the progression.

1. God started with the non-living world, creating and preparing everything needed to sustain life (the universe, light, water and earth, etc.)
2. God then proceeds to create plant-life. This, most likely, was done in preparation for the next step up in terms of importance.
3. Now God creates simple animal life, insects and small creatures. Note that this form of life is vastly different, and more conscious, than plants.
4. Next God creates the bigger animals, birds and other more intelligent creatures. Again, the bigger animals tend to be vastly superior (intellectually speaking) compared to insect life.
5. Finally, God creates man. Again, a vast improvement over even the smartest of animals.
6. But even more, God specifically points out the man holds a very special position; that of being created in God’s image.
7. And then even further, God specifically puts man in charge, to look after the rest of creatures God created.
8. And then GOD STOPS! No other creature in the physical realm holds a higher position than man.

Why do we consider the progression of the story to be important?  Well, the writer very prominently mentions the various numbered days, and what type of creation activity took place on each day.  Obviously he was trying to make a point that there is a progression of some sorts here.

The second important point to consider as proof of the central message, is the fact that Genesis 1 time, and time again points out that plants, bugs, animals were made according to their kind.  Was the writer making the point that each of these creatures were created different from each other?  By pointing out that each of the creatures were created the same as per their own kind, it also illuminates the fact that the animals/creatures created after, were in fact of higher standard, working up towards a climax, the physical creation of man.

Lastly, notice the distinct lack of spiritual language here.  Pretty much all of it is written in terms of the physical world.  In fact, we could argue that we actually learn almost nothing of the spiritual realm from this chapter.  If we had only this chapter in the Bible, we would know nothing about our relationship with God apart from the fact that God gave man a special place in creation.

So it appears as if the story of Genesis 1 is related to facts in the physical world.

Was Genesis 1 meant as a scientific description of creation?

While Genesis 1 certainly appears to be a description of the physical creation, it is most certainly not meant to be a piece scientific literature.  The author does not assume the reader to have any previous knowledge of scientific principles, nor does it care whether the reader is scientifically minded or not.

HOWEVER, this fact alone is not enough to allow the story of Genesis 1 to be scientifically inaccurate.  A writer does not need to be a scientist, nor be interested in writing a scientific article, in order to get the facts correct.

To illustrate this point, consider a newspaper article about the launch of an American space shuttle on mission to rescue Russian astronauts from the MIR Space Station.  The central message of such an article could be about the humanitarian aspects, or global politics, or even the financial waste of having people in space.  None of these central messages however allows the journalist to make inaccurate statements about any of the following aspects of the launch.

1. The time and date of the launch
2. The type and amount of fuel used on the space shuttle during launch
3. The location from where the shuttle was launched
4. The identities of the American or Russian astronauts
5. The ultimate fate of the astronauts, whether they returned safely or not.

Any journalist who makes factual mistakes, should he choose to mention any of these scientific points, would certainly be scoffed at.  Of course, these scientific truths may or may not be relevant to the story that he is writing, and he may choose to omit any one or all of these details, BUT IF he choose to mention them, IT MUST BE SCIENTIFICALLY ACCURATE.

Since the author of Genesis 1 was writing the passage for another purpose altogether, he had all the freedom in the world to omit any details that he wanted to, BUT those that he did choose to mention would have to be scientifically accurate.

So by this reasoning, we would expect the story of Genesis 1 to be at the very least, be consistent with scientific truths.

The Author of Genesis 1

This now brings us to another glaring problem.  If this is meant to be the quick version of how physical humans came to be, and the fact that humans were the last of God’s physical creations, obviously no human was around to observe the process.

So who wrote the story?  A little theology seems to be in order.

As Christians, we consider the Bible to be written by humans, by inspiration from God.  Effectively this implies that God is the author of the Bible, with various men and women acting as scribes.

2Ti 3:16  ‘All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness’

The term used for ‘inspiration’ in 2Tim 3:16 is theopneustos, the idea that it was breathed-in by God.

So, assuming we believe this to be true, it doesn’t actually matter who wrote this chapter.  In general it is accepted that Moses wrote this, after receiving the message from God.  Either way, the story of Genesis 1 could have only one of two outcomes.

1. The story was inspired, or written by God, and must be completely and utterly true and accurate, or
2. The story was made up by some person, in which case it is most likely false and inaccurate.

The authority and character of God and the Bible at risk

I trust that the previous section has made the issue abundantly clear.  The whole authenticity of the Bible hinges on the factual accuracy of Genesis 1.  As explained in the previous section, the creation story, if true, could ONLY have been told by God.  A single error or mistake or factual inaccuracy in this chapter would have any or all of the following consequences.

• If there is a mistake in Genesis 1, any one or more of the following could be true
  • God did not create the universe, thus
    • The Bible is not inspired by God and cannot be trusted
    • We can have no true knowledge of God, or even know if He exists
  • God did not tell the true version to the scribe who wrote it down, thus
    • God has lied or deliberately misled us, making everything else in the Bible suspect or susceptible to the same corruption
    • Mistakes could have crept in at other places in the Bible
  • The human author made the story up
    • Which would make everything else in the Bible suspect and susceptible to the same corruption
    • God probably does not exist
  • God made a mistake, or have forgotten some of the details
    • This would disqualify the whole concept of Him being God and being perfect and all-knowing. The whole story of the Bible then becomes a house of cards, utterly unreliable.

Genesis as a literary work

At this point it is worth discussing one of the popular alternative ideas that have been put forward as a possible explanation of why Genesis 1 might not be scientifically accurate without destroying the authenticity of the Bible.

The basic idea behind this school of thought is that Genesis 1 should be considered as a piece of literary writing, wherein the author would be allowed to make liberal use of artistic license, even at the expense of scientific accuracy.

But is it art?

We now need to consider whether Genesis 1 could be considered as a poem or song or other form of artistic writing.

There has been various attempt to prove that Genesis 1 should be considered as a song or poem.  Without going into details on any of these attempts, it is probably true that Genesis 1 should be considered as a beautiful piece of literary writing.  The structure, word play and repetition all points towards it being a piece of artistic writing.

Also, given its privileged position in the Bible, it would be very surprising if the writer did not at least attempt to write a beautiful piece of artistic writing.

BUT, none of this leaves any excuse or license for inaccuracy.  Even in non-biblical writing, any poem, song or piece of prose would have a central message to which everything in the work must be true.  In the case of Genesis 1, the central theme of the passage is the physical creation leading up to the creation of man as the main character of the rest of the story.  As a description of the physical creation, it has to be factually true, even if written in artistic form.

If we consider the other instances of songs in the Bible, they tell stories of factual truths, often related to the story of Exodus.  None of the songs or poems obscure the facts to the point of it being lost in symbolism.

Figure of speech?

Some people point out the Bible makes significant use of figurative speech and allegory.  Consider as examples:

1. Daniel’s various visions of lions with wings, animals with four heads and rocks growing to fill the earth.
2. The four horsemen of Revelation
3. Jesus’ parables, like the seed falling in various types of ground

There are no shortage of examples in the Bible where figurative speech was used to illustrate a bigger truth, or to explain principles, or to point out very specific features of future kings (as is the case in Daniel).

So could it be that the story of Genesis is another example of figurative speech, making use of imagery to better explain a central truth?

Personally I think it would be a long stretch to interpret Genesis 1 as allegory.

1. If it is meant figuratively, the interpretation of symbolism is utterly unclear. In most other cases in the Bible, the symbolic meaning of the story is abundantly clear, even if some of the details are not.
2. It is usually not difficult to decide whether a passage is meant to be symbolic in nature. Most of the imagery used in the Bible is vivid and extreme, or as is the case when Jesus told parables, he specifically points out that it is a parable.
3. It would not make sense to tell the story of physical creation, a realm with which we are intimately familiar, using symbolism. Often symbolism is used in exactly the opposite way, using items from the physical realm to explain concepts or truths in a more accessible way.

Another obvious problem to this view, is in the interpretation of the very next section in Genesis.  In Genesis 2 we read another version of the creation story, but this time with a very different central message.  In this case, the chronology becomes unimportant, and the author sets up the spiritual context of the Bible’s central message and points out how man relates to the rest of creation from a spiritual perspective.  Genesis 2 makes liberal use of symbolism, the use of Adams rib to make a woman being one of them.  Here, notice the fact that concepts from the physical realm (taking a rib from Adam) is used to explain a spiritual fact (that man and woman becomes spiritually one).  The fact that God did not physically take a rib from Adam to make Eve, does not make the story any less true or factually incorrect.  In the context of the story, in the build-up to Genesis 3 (The Fall), it makes perfect sense.

What would not make sense though, is why there would be TWO creation stories, BOTH making liberal use of symbolism.  It is obvious that the two versions have very different central messages and purposes, which supports the point that Genesis 1 refers to the physical creation, and again suggesting that this has to be factually consistent with a scientific description of creation.

Target Audience

Another potential loop-hole for the scientific consistency of Genesis 1 could be to consider the target audience to whom the passage was written.  In any piece of literature, we find that the author normally has a specific set of people in mind, to whom he is writing.  In many cases the target audience is expected to have a certain amount of background knowledge of the topic or situation, and these the author would not necessarily mention.

One typical example of such a situation would be a sport commentator describing the course of a cricket match over the radio.  The commentator might assume that he is speaking to the typical sport fan who is familiar with concepts like wickets, fours and no-balls.  The very same commentator, knowing that he is explaining the match to a class of Grade 1s trying to learn the rules of the game, would have a vastly different approach and style of presenting the very same fact.

So could it be that Genesis 1 was aimed at a very specific audience?  Maybe the story was meant for the nation of Israel while they were gathered around Mount Sinai when the received the Ten Commandments?  Or maybe it was meant for the Hebrew people who lived in the diaspora during the time of Babylonian captivity?

To complicate things even further, scientific understanding of the world around us changed almost constantly over the past 5000 year.  Certain scientific concepts that we know today, would have been considered heresy only 200 years ago.  It was only in 1998 that we realized that almost three quarters of the stuff in the universe consists of dark matter, so called because we have no idea what it is.

It would be fair to say that the story of Genesis 1 would have been inconsistent with the contemporary scientific understanding of the creation story at least at some point in the past 1000 year, never mind the previous 5000 year. Is it thus fair to expect the creation story of Genesis 1 to be scientifically consistent in the year 2016?

The author of Genesis 1 could have a number of options to address this problem.

1. He could have written the story to be scientifically consistent with the knowledge of his own time.
2. He could have had a very specific future audience in mind, to achieve a very specific purpose, and written it so that it would be scientifically consistent with the knowledge of a future culture.
3. He could have written it in general terms that would avoid needing to address specific knowledge of any future scientific paradigms.
4. Assuming he knows the absolute truth, written it to be consistent with the absolute scientific reality (as opposed to any scientific knowledge of any given time period, which was due to be replaced in the future).
5. Write version of the story that does not take any scientific realities into account, as would be the case where Genesis 1 is purely figurative in nature.

This is probably the most difficult aspect of all those discussed in this article to attempt to answer.  A reasonable way to attempt a guess would be to consider the rest of the Bible, and how similar problems are addressed in other sections of the Bible.

As Christians, we consider the Bible to be timeless, speaking to us even today.  This is due to the fact that the Bible was inspired by God, and that God’s Spirit opens up certain truths to us as we study the Bible, truths that are relevant to us as individuals in our unique circumstances.  This is what we mean when we say that the Bible is living.

Heb 4:12  For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

It is also known that certain parts of the Bible can have multiple concurrent meanings.  This is the case where certain Old Testament prophecies had a specific meaning for the target audience of the time, but it also had a vivid prediction of future events, like the coming Messiah.

If we consider Genesis 1 to be inspired by God, effectively making God Himself he Author of the passage, then we should not be surprised to find multiple layers of consistency.  It is my personal belief that God would not compromise on the writing the story to be verifiably consistent with the true course of events.  The implication of this would be that at some point in the past, and possibly even today, the story of Genesis 1 could appear to be inconsistent with the contemporary scientific knowledge.  This would not be because Genesis 1 is wrong, but because our scientific understanding of the world is wrong.

Is our scientific knowledge in 2016 sufficient to evaluate the factual accuracy of Genesis 1?

This is another very difficult question to answer, for the simple reason that any given scientist might have answered ‘yes’ to this question over the past 1000 years.

To address this question, it is as important to ask what we don’t know, as what we do know.  One of the major breakthroughs in scientific understanding in the last couple of hundred years, was to develop a way to quantify the statistical certainty of scientific facts.  Modern scientists are generally not only interested in making a bold conjecture on certain topics (like the age of the universe), but can also state a degree of certainty associated with a given measurement.

In addition to this, technology also allows us to test a given theory using a number of independent techniques.  For example, if you can do five completely different and independent experiments to prove that the earth is round, you can have a lot more confidence in the theory that the earth is round, compared to Columbus who only had one set of proofs, the fact that he did not fall off the edge of the earth.

For example, we have a high degree of confidence in our modern description of sub-atomic particles as describe by Quantum Mechanics, often called the ‘Most Precisely Tested Theory in the History of Science’.  Quantum Mechanics makes some very strange predictions, but time and time again these are tested to be true.  If the biblical creation account in Genesis 1 proves to be inconsistent with one of the predictions made in quantum mechanics, we would have good reason to reject the biblical account (or our interpretation thereof) as false to a degree of certainty approaching 99.9999999999999%.

Other theories, like that of evolution, suffers from a myriad of fundamental problems that still needs proper answers before it can be called a scientific fact, in spite of how it is portrayed in popular media.  A biblical description not consistent with the theory of evolution would thus not be a major problem for the biblical account.

In short, there has never been a time in the history of science where we have been in a better position to quantify our certainty of certain facts, giving us a way to determine objectively how certain we are of our scientific theories.

Conclusion

In this article it was reasoned that the factual accuracy of Genesis 1 is vitally important to uphold the authority of the Bible, and by extension, the character of God.  Even though Genesis 1 was never meant to be a scientific description of creation, there are good reasons to expect the passage to be scientifically consistent with the true version of events.  If even one factual mistake can be found in Genesis 1, the whole of the Bible should be considered unreliable.

It was also shown that Genesis 1, while likely to be a brilliant piece of literary art, still has the obligation to be scientifically consistent with the true version of events.

Lastly it was pointed out that modern science has ways and means of quantifying how well we understand a specific theory of reality and this can give us a certain degree of confidence in evaluating the Genesis 1 account of creation, or our interpretation thereof.

 

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“If I have been enticed into brashness by the wonderful beauty of your works, or if I have loved my own glory among men, while advancing in work destined for your glory, gently and mercifully pardon me; and finally, deign graciously to cause that these demonstrations may lead to your glory and to the salvation of souls, and nowhere be an obstacle to that. Amen.”

 

 

Johannes Kepler – The Harmony of the World (1619), end of book