Something to keep in mind when you're arguing or debunking Creationism or "Intelligent Design" is that, in addition to knowing our side of it, the logical reasonable non-crazy science side, it also helps to know what they're claiming to believe. So here we have the Genesis account of creation, in the King James Version. After I go through it and comment on the various stages, I'll go into some of the different kinds of Creationism. Bear in mind that each of the Creationist schools of thought is convinced that
it and it alone is the correct one. I went through a lot of work to put this together, recommendations are therefore appreciated. Thanks to
Bible Gateway and
Origins.edu for unwittingly being my sources.
Here's the whole story kiddos. Grab some popcorn and a refreshing beverage and enjoy the myt- ::cough cough:: uh, I meant to say ride. Enjoy the ride.
Genesis 1
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
Note that there's no sun or moon or stars, just "light" and "darkness". I've heard it said from some stickler creationists that the reason the world seems to be so much older then the Bible says is because the world was already there when God started creation. That would seem to contradict the Genesis account. Genesis says clearly that the first day was when the heavens and the earth were created. Goes from In The Beginnging to The First Day, no intermediate time indicated. It also doesn't say were the light came from.
6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
7 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.
8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
According to this, Heaven is a place on earth (ooo baby do you know what that's worth). One would assume that the clouds are the water above and lakes and oceans and such are the waters below, and that would make all the air inbetween to be Heaven.
9 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.
10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.
11 And 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.
12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.
So on the third day, we have a pretty dramatic mental image. The waters part and land thrusts its way up from the deep. Continents forming in the blink of an eye. And then, hours later (sorta, there's no sun yet) we have all the plants, every variety of them, coming from nowhere and covering the earth. Kinda like a map editing program for a strategy game like AoE. I can picture God selecting a certain kind of tree from a drop-down menu and then just clicking willy-nilly all over the North American continent. Heh heh.
14 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:
15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
Right here we have the greatest argument against the "day-age" Creationists. In fact, this is an argument I picked up from the "literal 6-day" Creationists for use in convincing the day-agers that the literal account is true. See, if a day was a thousand years, the plants would all die for lack of sun. For that matter, the flowers and other plants would all die for lack of pollination, because there's no insects yet. Also, I'm confused, because I thought the firmament was the space between the clouds, or the "water above" and the water below. But now they're telling me the sun and the moon and all the stars are in the firmament. Oh, and verse 14 has a tacit approval of astrology, if you catch it. Says the lights in the sky are to be for signs (listed first as a matter of fact) and for telling time as well. Seems to be saying to look to the sky for portents and omens and such. This passage also has the greatest argument against Creationism, period. According to this, the sun and the stars were created after the earth was. Hell, according to this, the sun was created after pine trees. Day-age or not, we know that the stars and the sun are all older then the earth. I mean, even an idiot knows that. It's no big surprise, it doesn't take any kind of special rocket science knowledge to figure that out. So, there ya go. Now, sure, you could interpret this passage figuratively, and say that it doesn't really mean God made the stars right then and there, but that there was a cloud or something between the earth and the stars, and it was cleared away at this point, pulled back like a curtain, showing the stars and sun and all that. But then you have to start interpreting the whole Bible figuratively, and then you can't be a fundamentalist anymore and they take away your Focus on the Family membership card and you have to go join the UCC or something.
20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
Here we have fish and sea mammals and birds spontaneously springing into existence. Don't know why the great whales got special mention over, say, sharks, or sea bass, but there you go. Maybe God thinks blue whales are really cool, and I'd agree with him on that.
24 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.
25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
And here is why the fundys are so happy to exploit the planet into destruction. God gave it to them to use, and before it's all useless and shitty they'll all be raptured anyway, so what's the problem? I guess reptiles are included in creeping things, not sure where the amphibians fall in. maybe this is why Roberts hates toads, because they aren't listed in Genesis and must therefore be something unnatural.
28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
Incidentally, God never gave us dominion over trees. Just saying. Worth noting there, that while we can use plants for food and such, it doesn't say anything about clear-cutting old-growth forests. The forests, it would seem, are God's forests, according to Genesis chapter 1 anyway. It's also worth noting that God says we can use marijuana here, in fact, he has given us the herb.
So, there ya go. The third and fourth days are really where I think the whole thing falls apart. Now you know what Genesis says (KJV anyway, go to Bible gateway for other versions) about the creation account.
What are the main Creationist schools of thought? Well, I was lucky enough to find a website that posts the five main theories and, from a fundamentalist point of view, why the five theories are wrong and why the only good Christian way to interpret the Bible is literal. Here's the link: Literal Creationism
The first eleven chapters of Genesis record Creation, the Fall, the Flood, and the early history of man until the call of Abraham.
They read factually, going straight into a description of the real world. There is no suggestion that they are recounting events belonging to another world or level of reality. They contain sixty-four geographical terms, eighty-eight personal names, forty-eight generic names, and at least twenty-one identifiable cultural items (such as gold, bdellium, onyx, brass, iron, gopher wood, bitumen, mortar, brick, stone, harp, pipe, cities, towers). Every one of these items presents us with the possibility of establishing the reliability of the account. The list contrasts, for example, with the paucity of such references in the Koran. The tenth chapter alone has five times more geographical data of importance than the whole of that book.
The account is in narrative prose, frequently using the Hebrew 'waw' consecutive with the verb, the direct object sign, and the relative pronoun. It stresses definitions, and spreads events in sequential order.
The phrase 'these are the generations of' implies straightforward history. It is used not only of Aaron and Moses,1 Terah,2 Jacob,3 Noah,4 but also for the heaven and the Earth.5
All the New Testament books refer to these eleven chapters, and each chapter is specifically referred to. Jesus referred to each of the first seven chapters.
This is establishing the accuracy "street cred" of Genesis. Note how they can't resist a dig at a "lesser" holy book, the Koran. Shock! Really though, they say a whole lot about nothing. If you read that second paragraph, they're basically saying "Genesis talks about a lot of stuff, it must be right!" But yes, it is clear from what they're saying that the Bible clearly intends Genesis to be taken literally.
Next they have a neat little table and the declarative statement that
The account reads as straightforward history and is treated as fact throughout Scripture.
It backs this up by saying
There are a number of reasons which demand that it be factual. Other Scriptures depend its historicity for validating their message. Psalm 104 uses it to demonstrate God's creative power and majesty. Our Lord answers a question about divorce by citing God as its author.6 Peter and James both refer to it as factual.7 Paul, in Romans 5, rests his entire argument on Adam being a literal person. Only if one man is the source of universal sin can one man be the source of universal salvation.8 He also cites the story of Adam and Eve as the basis for instruction on behaviour in churches.9 Sequences of events clearly inspired by Genesis 1 occur in a prophetic context in Revelation 8 and 9 and in an apocalytic context in Revelation 16.
And now we have the start of the attacks on non-literal Creationism (including "Intelligent Design")
The apparent conflict between the creation story and the findings of evolutionary science has led to attempted harmonizations. Five main theories have been proposed: the Gap Theory, the Age-Day Theory, the Pictorial-Day Theory, the Literary Theory, and Theistic Evolution.
The Gap Theory I've actually never heard of previous to this, but it's pretty cool. Basically, it says that
It states that the Earth originally created in Genesis 1:1 was populated with plants, animals, and pre-Adamic men, but because of the fall of Lucifer (that is, Satan) it was destroyed by God in a universal cataclysmic flood. It was simultaneously plunged into darkness and thus became 'without form and void'.10 This first destruction is thought to account for the vast geological ages including the fossils. The Earth's present landscape is seen as a relic of this pre-Adamic destruction. The six literal days of Genesis 1:3-31 are therefore a re-creation to provide a home for man.
In addition to declaiming other facets of it, the website makes these points:
1. Adam was given dominion over all living creatures.11 If the Gap Theory is correct, there were many creatures who lived before his time over which he would never have ruled.
- If carnivorous creatures were living and dying not only before Adam but even before the fall of Lucifer, death cannot have been due to his fall. Yet Scripture ascribes the Earth's 'groaning and travailing in pain' to this cause.12
- The use of the term 'very good' to describe the created Earth in Genesis 1:31 seems unreasonable if it had already once been the domain of Satan and the graveyard of millions of creatures.
- If all original plants and animals were destroyed they would probably have no genetic relationship to existing types. Most living things in the world today, however, are clearly descended from those found in the fossil record. If pre-Adamic men existed, there can have been no provision for their spiritual needs. Such a possibility is irreconcilable with the rest of Scripture.
- If the geological record is explainable by a pre-Adamic flood, it leaves nothing for explanation by Noah's Flood. Geology reveals no chaotic period between human times and the preceding Tertiary age.
- Finally, it seems incredible that the majesty and sublime simplicity of the Creation account which forms the basis of so much else in Scripture, can merely relate to a secondary event, while the earlier and more important origins receive only a passing reference.
Day-age is next. I heard about day age a lot from kids at church; I was taught literal 6-day, but most public schooled Christians favored day-age. Basically, since it says somewhere in the Bible that "A day is like a thousand years to the Lord" or something like that, maybe the "days" talked about in Genesis were just really long periods of time. I learned the arguments against it at an early age, but I'll reproduce them here as well.
1. Yom almost invariably refers to literal days when used with an ordinal such as 'first', 'second', etc. It is usually quite clear from the context when it is being used figuratively. The straightforward narrative style of the creation story argues that it is not.
- The reference to 'evenings' and 'mornings' of each day indicates that they were literal twenty-four-hour days.
- The Sabbath commandment contains a direct statement that it commemorates a six-day creation. Since the Sabbath is itself a literal day, this only makes sense if the preceding six days were also literal. The tables of stone on which the commandment was written are central to Old Testament worship and unique in being written by the finger of God Himself. Any figurative interpretation of the creation story thus brings into question the whole basis of Old Testament religion. The ten-commandment law is also basic to the New Testament and continues in the post-millenial Earth.13 John sees the heavenly counterpart of the ark of the covenant, which by assumption included the ten-commandment law.14 Thus the religion of both Old and New Testaments, including their eschatology, is inseparably linked to a six-day creation.
- The Age-Day Theory cannot explain the conventional scientific view of evolution. If each day represents an aeon, how could the vegetation survive through the long third day until the sun appeared? Even this would not be enough. In order to pollinate, it would have to survive through the whole fourth day into the fifth before insects were available. This would be impossible. Also, the order of Genesis 1 does not accord with the fossil record. The palaeontological sequence is approximately: bottom dwelling sea mollusks fish vegetation reptiles birds mammals. In Genesis the highest forms of vegetation precede the lowliest sea creatures, and the most complex bird precedes the lowliest reptile.
This theory is thus at variance with both the Genesis account and evolution.
Next we have pictorial-day theory, which I also have never heard of before. This is very surprising for me, you understand. But then, I heard nothing but literal 6-day at home and in homeschool classes and day-age at church for 17 years. Anyway, pictorial-day says:
This is also known as 'Moderate Concordism'. It follows the Gap Theory in believing in a prior creation as described in Genesis 1:1, but adheres to literal days by teaching that the process was revealed to Adam in this time. It is based on the claim that the Hebrew words bara (create) and asah (make or do) which are used throughout Genesis 1 can have the sense of 'reveal'.
The objections to Pictorial-day are much the same as the objections to the previous theories.
You know what? None of these "theories" are actual theories. These are Creation Myths and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
Anyway.
Here's another minor theory I'd never heard of. The Literary Theory. Apparently Genesis was intended to be an early Chick tract to counter paganism in the Promised Land. Whatever. I'm not even going to waste y'alls time by reposting the theory or its debunkings. Basically, yadda yadda yadda, Genesis is literal and historical, and so on. I want to get to the next one, the big one, the doozy.
Theistic Evolution. This right here is what we have heard referred to as Intelligent Design. The website states that this is the most widespread of all views on evolution, but of course (shock!) that doesn't make it right. Most reasonable Christians you run into hold to theistic evolution, because with it, you're fitting your religion to the existing hard science and not the other way around. Makes sense to me. But not to a good literal Creationist fundy. Here's what the website has to say about Intelligent Design.
Theistic Evolution is perhaps the most widespread of all views on evolution today. It accepts the spiritual message of the Bible but believes that the early chapters should not be taken literally but interpreted in the light of their overall function. It contends that God controlled the Earth's origins through an evolutionary process. It believes that the Bible speaks of the origin of the universe and its make-up, not to present a scientific treatise but in order to state the correct relationships of man with God and with the universe. It employs the terms of the cosmology in use at the time of the writers to explain that God created the world not as the seat of the gods, as was taught by other cosmogomes and cosmologies, but for the service of man and the glory of God. It does not deal in detail with the origin and make-up of the universe because its aim is not to teach how the heavens were made but how one goes to heaven. It therefore views the Bible and science as different but complementary sources of knowledge.
Therefore, theistic evolution has the advantage of denying neither science nor the Bible. It accords with the assumption, originating with Thomas Aquinas, that natural science and theology can be separated and their mutual interdependence disregarded in arriving at truth. Its popularity today is less due to its intrinsic merit than to the wide publicity it has enjoyed. It tacitly underlies most standard scientific texts and popular presentations of scientific facts.
But it cannot be sustained. It shelves the central debate between Genesis and science by implicitly subjecting the former to the judgement of the latter. The Creation and Flood stories are so interwoven with the whole of the rest of Scripture that they cannot be dissociated from it. Its truth stands or falls by theirs. The Bible differs irreconcilably not with science, but with current scientific views of the origins and age of the Earth, life, and humanity. Until these questions are resolved, there can be no agreement between the two sources of knowledge.
That last paragraph is your greatest tool in debunking Creationists or Intelligent Design types. The Bible simply doesn't allow it.
When discussing Intelligent Design with a Creationist, it's very useful to know what the strict Christian perspective on it is. You force them to choose between Bible and Science, and Science has the facts, baby. Either the whole Bible is taken figuratively (and you lose the Focus on the Family membership card, join the UCC or the UUs, and so forth), which makes it questionable if anything in the Bible is factual, or you take the Bible literally and damn the evidence. Anything to the contrary is a Satanic plot to weaken God's Word with the demonic tools of Science and Reason.
So, now you are armed to argue for Reason and Science. Have fun! Hope this was informative.