• Could God’s “Seven Day” creation actually be billions of years?
• Fallacies of those who conclude there is no God simply because they find a way to explain the previously unexplainable.
• How did Noah get possibly billions of species on the ark?
• What if the rate of change is so fast that “extinction” should be relabeled “easy come, easy go?”
• Genesis is consistent with but is not history. Extreme views of evolution try to devise a history consistent with observations but with no allowance for God. Intelligent design is consistent with both God and observations.

If you’ve read my population series, you’ll recall that one of the greatest crises of my life came as I recognized that evolution as preached by the godless had a logical premise and made it seem as though God may not exist – something that ran against all I had learned and sensed. This crisis initiated a search for God that culminated in one of the most special, supernatural events of my life. It was truly a miraculous revelation that confirmed to my spirit that God knows me and loves me.

I’ve since had much time to ponder the triangle of traditional Evangelical interpretation of creation, “intelligent design”, and evolution as proselytized from the predisposition that there is no God. Like many things, the right answer is often not at a polar extreme. In this case, I think somewhere in the middle of the triangle, and entirely compatible with intelligent design.

I apologize for not citing references, and I don’t really know how most are interpreting the term “intelligent design”. I just think on paper, and maybe someday I’ll gather the references to support my thoughts.

 

A Genesis “Day” could be VERY long – not necessarily 24 hours or even 1000 years.

First, consider Creation as depicted in Genesis. Many Evangelical Christians have historically fought for a belief that the bible supports either seven 24-hour days for creation, or seven thousand years (citing a bible passage noting that “a day unto man is as a thousand years unto God” – note that “as 1000” is not necessarily implying precise mathematics, but could just mean “a really long time” similar to uses of “seventy times seven”. Further, it could also be referencing not Genesis, but possibly the rotation of Kolob, which is also said to rotate once every thousand years I’ve heard).

Traditionally non-LDS Christian interpretation of bible passages has not held room for the lengthier “millions and billions” of years that geologists and evolutionist believe necessary to arrive at our observable earth – indeed they even historically viewed any concession in this area as somehow weakening their position on evolution.

I’m not a Church Spokesman, but I believe Latter-Day Saints accept the Genesis Creation story as literally accurate (as far as it is correctly translated, and I have no reason to doubt any particular translation). This is not to say that commonly held interpretations are correct, or that anyone has really gotten many of the fine details right. I think of it like this (applies to other scriptures also). Imagine that when the Lord comes, maybe we’ll all circle around as he interprets the scriptures. He will read Genesis and then perhaps “play the video” of what actually occurred, and narrate what is going on and why. When we see the video, we may discover that many of our long-held interpretations are simply not right, but that there are apparently other interpretations of the same words that will suddenly make sense to us when we see the video.

One alternative interpretation of the same words is to interpret “day” not as 24 hours, nor as 1000 years, but more as “in that day” which is used some times simply to indicate a period that is markedly different than another period. Thus for the seven days of creation, the first could have taken 24 hours, the next 1000 years, the next 1 billion years, perhaps even to the period between Adam’s “breath of life” and being expelled from the garden could have itself taken millions of years. Since the first parents were essentially immortal prior to the fall, and there is no statement in scripture as noting the time that passed between first breath and the fall, then it is at least possible it was a very long time.

Hence the “day as a period” interpretation suddenly allows Genesis to take a great leap forward in being compatible with much of today’s scientific thinking on the history of the world. Medieval Christianity misinterpreted scripture as suggesting heavenly bodies revolved around the Earth. When scientists with math and instruments held otherwise, it took a long time for Christians to reconcile the new knowledge with the scriptures. Now anyone can easily accept that the scriptures never really said in so many words that the earth was the center of the rotational universe.

In a few more years, I think most Christians will likewise easily accept that the scriptures don’t actually say the first day started on January 1, in the year 6000 BA (Before Adam); and the second started on January 1, 5000 BA. They will accept that a day can simply mean a span of time with a beginning and an ending. How long is a season? If we had no clocks and calendars to mark the dates, we wouldn’t know the precise minute we officially moved from summer to fall, but over longer lengths we would still be able to discern when we are clearly in summer, clearly in fall, etc. The days could have been like this – fuzzy to tell precisely where one ends and the next begins, but easy to observe over a span of time that “plant life has fully blossomed, and animal life is clearly accelerating to fill the earth”.

 

Something reasonable or logical is not necessarily factual

So on with evolution. I believe that Darwin had an extraordinarily keen gift of observation. He observed numerous physical traits that were obviously well suited for specie’s situation. However, he tended to approach these observations from a previous conclusion that there is no God, and therefore all things must be explained in some other way. So the “survival of the fittest” concept emerged as a logical explanation that required no God in order to potentially arrive at the observable world.

There is a fallacy here that many keen minds overlook. Just because something is logical does not mean it was actual. In this case, where one of the only other explanations involves God, many have considered the “logic” of God and decided He is too fanciful, illogical, and likely just the product of human mental evolution as the “ape” in us left and we became able to search for cause and effect. If you have predetermined that God cannot exist, then you have a hard time envisioning how the living world could have came into existence in any other way than billions of random mutations that occasionally produced a beneficiary. 

Back to interpretations. The godless see a feature of a species that clearly helps it fit into a unique environment (like katydids that look exactly like the leaves they eat), and begin drawing “factual conclusions” when alternative explanations that are very possible exist. “The katydid has adapted a camouflage defense”.  What of the possibility that the katydid didn’t end up this way by the magical millennia of chromosome crossing DNA, but rather by a loving God loves the katydid and just made it look like that to help it out? Sounds silly, but if there is a God, He could do that. He would still use natural, physical laws that might be described as adapting, but we don’t know all of those laws, and what we think must take millions of years may just take seconds if you happen to know the chemistry as God would. Or who’s to say it can’t be exactly as the scientists assume, but that this just happens to be the mechanism by which God creates animals and species (survival of the fittest over millions of years, but enabled and endorsed by Heaven rather than simply random happenstance of atoms in the universe).

 

Fallacy: All observable phenomenon have a scientific explanation, therefore God cannot exist, because His “magical” works actually have scientific explanations.

I find it interesting how many learned think they are wise when they uncover a mystery and conclude “Ok, now I know there can be no God, because I can now observe and explain how something works, so there is no more need to explain it by an invisible hand”. It’s crazy because people who pride themselves in their ability to avoid falling into error end up falling victim to such a simple logical error. “If God is an explanation for what we do not know, then once we know it, it can no longer be explained by God”.  Duh! Of course it can!  I think all they’ve done is just figured out a tiny bit about how God does his work, but then taken the credit for themselves. Who says the works of God would not have a scientific explanation?

They wrongly assume that all “true believers” are childlike and believe God works by magical powers. When they uncover a mystery and find there is no magic, they think they have conclusively demonstrated that there is no God because there is no magic. Who said God’s works and miracles are the result of magic? Look at what we do today that would seem like magic a thousand years ago, and yet we may have only discovered 1,010 natural laws of 1,010,000,000,000 that exist. David Copperfield knows a few laws that we don’t. He doesn’t operate by magic, but it sure looks like he does!

 

After Moses saw “Intelligent Design”, he was unimpressed by the Pharaohs

God knows how to tap all the laws, and if He were to sponsor a circus act He could drop our jaws even today.  Raising the dead, healing the blind, moving mountains – excellent after-the-show conversation… but it’s not magic! It’s mind over matter. At full strength, it is the real science that many so-called scientists will never find, and indeed no mortal besides a privileged few in vision or in excellent faith proven over many years will ever witness or harness on this side of eternity. Moses was one of those few. As a Prince of Egypt, and party to the most impressive works of mankind to that date, he stated after he was privileged to see the works of God, “Now I know that man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed” (Moses 1, verse 10 – also see this reference in my What is Real series: “What is real? That man is nothing and everything at the same time”). It is Priesthood. In some ways it is not all that different than “the Force” that Yoda taught, and in other ways it is.

Many Modern Merlin’s have taken the Pride elevator up to the “Science is a God unto itself” suite (located at 666 Great and Spacious Way, Lost Vegas, Babylon). If they were to read what I’ve written, they’d laugh me to scorn as just another nut-job trying to follow the rod to the Tree, (and believe me, I know there are nut-jobs out there. Yes among both Mormons and Christians generally, but the biggest nut-jobs are the godless who have lied to themselves for so long that they now believe passionately in their own lies).

 

Polar bears and grizzles may have a common ancestry, but is that necessarily proof we came from apes or ooze?

Great stuff ‘ey? On with evolution! It is a stretch of the imagination to observe that a bear in colder climates has longer hair, and from that conclude that lightning must have struck primordial ooze and formed a cell. I believe that “survival of the fittest” is a natural law of a fallen, Telestial world. Of course it is. In the dog-eat-dog world, the strong procreate, and the weak do not. It is not in itself evil or threatening to religion to simply observe this fact. Likewise, I’ve seen enough nature shows now to know for myself that there truly is something about different environments that encourages spin-offs from a basic animal form into a colorful world with 100 types of “deer”. Does that threaten Genesis? Again, Genesis says God placed animals on the earth on the fifth day. It doesn’t say how He did it, and it doesn’t say they had to stay exactly the same as they started.

 

How did Noah get possibly billions of species on the ark?

The answer? Maybe he didn’t need to. Change induced by environment may actually help explain the Noah story. Those who believe all land on earth was submersed, and that a boat smaller than today’s ocean liners somehow managed to fit all the millions if not billions of species, are mocked by “mathematicians” who love to show that there isn’t enough water to do it in the first place, and in the second you couldn’t fit the mass tonnage of flesh on the boat anyway even if just in pairs. Back to those laws at God’s circus show. If He wants water, He’s got water, and even the best meteorologist won’t find the water hiding up his sleeve.  As for the mass tonnage? What if He just took a basic deer, a few basic dogs, etc. Then once off the boat, He Himself dispersed the first several generations to all corners, and set “advantageous mutations” into high gear. Before long you could get enough footage for the Crocodile Hunter and pals to remain top rated for decades.

 

“Nearly extinct” seems such a tragedy, where “easy come, easy go” may be less so.

When an environmentalist-whacko says a red-bellied scurimunger fly is “nearly extinct”, they’re implying it has been on the planet for the last billion years and if we allow that Wal-Mart to be built it will be gone forever next week. It does seem like a tragedy in a way – the thought that something so long a part of the earth would be suddenly no more just so we could get some plastic junk from China. However, what if that fly isn’t really a billion years old? What if it just made its debut during the two years that City Council was fighting with Wal-Mart? Is it still “nearly extinct?” Or is it just “easy come, easy go?”  This is not to say we shouldn’t help the poor fly out if there’s a reasonable way to do it, but maybe we also don’t need to mourn the loss of a billion year pure-bred line either. It simply may not be that old. Besides, another pretty face, with a comedy act from just another pretty-ugly face, will be along soon to capture the Nature Channel’s leading role.

 

In summary, does evolution exist?

So does evolution exist? I think “yes and no”. Yes, as bears roam around, some get fat, some turn white, some grow long hair, and somehow their DNA makes it happen and remembers that what was useful for the parent may also be useful for the baby, so a baby polar bear will still probably be white even if it was born in Honolulu. Does this prove we came from monkeys? No. Did primordial ooze turn into a fish, which crawled out and became a brontosaurus? I doubt it but I don’t know. If it did, does that mean God was not involved? No.

Did man come from apes, and the first ape that was “man” enough was named Adam by God? NO, NO, NO! I believe that in Genesis, God made some basic animals and man “from the dust” as He says, whatever that means, and then from there we got a lot of variety, even among men! (If I’m ever invited to see the wonders of Priesthood as it taps the sciences known only unto God, that’s one I’ve got to see). I don’t think a fish gave birth to a brontosaurus (even in a million years), but I can imagine a band of Arabian horses getting lost in Siberia and a Russian selling some Clydesdales to a German a few thousand years later.

 

Genesis is a spiritual record consistent with history, but the history itself is not written in detail.  “Intelligent design” is an attempt to find a “potentially accurate” history that is at least consistent with both God and facts.

So does intelligent design exist? Most certainly YES! Creation as stated in Genesis is certainly consistent with the hour by hour facts of how the world got to this point (even if it was hour by hour for billions of years). But the Genesis account is not necessarily a record of scientific explanations. In other words, the purpose of Genesis, as with all scripture, is to provide us with just what we need to know for our spiritual well-being. It is not a record of the “blueprints of God’s designs”. If we had those hour-by-hour blue-prints, we would see that there is nothing in them that contradicts Genesis.

Extreme evolutionists believe science does not allow any room for a “mystical” God, so they build their “potentially accurate” explanations without any allowance for the possibility of God in the picture. However, it is possible to observe all scientific data, accept possibilities such as billion-year planet, and accept “survival of the fittest” change and adaptation lines of reasoning, but do so with a more open mind which concedes it is certainly possible that there is a God, and we may be simply discovering small bits and pieces of how He does His work.

The godless mock Christians in part because traditional Christian interpretation of Genesis (7, 24 hour days, or even 7,000 years) does not seem remotely possible in the “regular events, regular erosion” way of explaining the Grand Canyon. Since creation story is not a specific historical record, the concept of intelligent design is an attempt build a “potentially accurate” record. This is done with logical explanations and reason, consistent with the possibility of a God and observable facts.

I’ve often been glad to think that maybe the Earth has been under construction for 4 billion years. If so, it just shows how important we are to God that He would spend so much time to create a habitat whose most significant purpose is to house the family of Adam over a short 7,000 years! Time is as nothing to an infinite and eternal God and only exists for us, so what’s the big deal over billions of years? God has certainly got the time.

No matter how life got to be as diverse as it is, I just can’t see any language in Genesis that is incompatible with anything I’ve pitched here – including the “God made the Grand Canyon and a gazillion animals in a 40-hour week”. Well, He may have had to work till late on Saturday to pull it off, but if anyone can do it He can!

Speaking of late, I’ve been working till 3:30 in the morning just to pull this off. Now I know that man is nothing, which thing I actually had supposed.