By Will Hall, Baptist Message executive editor
This is the second installment of a 12-part series about evidence that the Bible is truth.
ALEXANDRIA, La. (LBM) – When Bible critics attack the creation account, they almost always first argue that “every religion has a creation story” or make some similar dismissive statement that attempts to shut off discussion without looking at the facts.
However, lumping the Bible’s creation account in with other religions’ creation mythologies is an act of sophistry (deliberate lie) or fallacy (unintention
al deception) because it ignores the extraordinary differences that make the Bible’s record of events distinct in its trustworthiness.
Outside of Christianity, regardless of the religion or the culture, creation stories tend to fall into one of several categories: (1) The world resulted because of fighting among various gods. (2) The world resulted from intimacy between a fertility goddess and another god. (3) Some creation myths describe their gods as emerging from the world (i.e. the world always existed, and their god was produced by nature – not the other way around).
In stark contrast, only Genesis 1 narrates an orderly process that is scientifically plausible: By a measured and stepwise process, God, who has always existed, formed light (day one), atmosphere (day two), land, water, all green vegetation (day three), seasons (day four), water creatures and birds of the air (day five), and land animals, man and woman (day six).
Importantly, these are not simply details. Instead, each physical element that God formed combined with the specific sequence in which He made each provide a penetrating truth about the biblical account of creation. What Genesis describes are the very conditions needed for the process known as photosynthesis, which the science of biology describes as the basis for sustaining all life on our planet.
Photosynthesis requires light (day one) and CO2 (day 2), as well as nutrients (found in soil), water, and chlorophyll (found only in green plants) (day 3). Moreover, each of these elements were established before God breathed life into any creature, man or beast — all of which depend on photosynthesis for life.
In an orderly fashion, God purposely created a sustainable system to support the physical nature of our human existence. All other creation narratives are simply tall tales.
The first article in this series revealed that science validates Genesis 1:20 and the watery state of the world in the beginning (as opposed to the long-held trope of the science community that our planet’s water arrived via the ice carried by comets or meteorites that crashed into Earth). Meanwhile, this second installment offers the key distinction about the Bible’s account that sets it apart from any other religion’s claim about the beginning.
Importantly, both Part 1 and Part 2 provide verifiable evidence that should reassure a believer’s confidence in the Word, especially in the face of attack from those who wrap themselves in the cloak of science. But remember “we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7). Evidence will help believers “give a defense for the hope that is in you” (1 Pet. 3:15). However, evidence is not a substitute for that hope!
