...and does it matter? Part 1 of a new mini-series on Creationism.

Editorial introduction: We are delighted to publish the first in a three-part series on scientific evidence for a Creator, written by researcher, author and lecturer Paul Garner. The relationship between science and faith is an important spiritual battle-ground in the modern world, so it behoves us all to know what we believe about Genesis.

Whether you subscribe to a ‘young Earth’ or an ‘old Earth’, a seven-day Creation or a ‘millions of years’ evolutionary model, we hope that Paul’s in-depth research and writing will provoke you to think seriously about what you believe and why – for the sake of the Gospel.

In this first part of the series, Paul lays out different possible theories about the origins of human life and asks what kind of theology each requires.

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The debate about origins – the origin of the universe, of life and of human beings – rages as fiercely today as it did at the time of Charles Darwin. A central question in the debate concerns common ancestry. Are all organisms related by descent from a single, common ancestor (as evolutionary theory proposes) or were many kinds separately created in the beginning (as creation theory proposes)?

Another question concerns the age of the Earth. Is the Earth 4.6 billion years old (as conventional science suggests) or is it about 6,000 years old (as a straightforward reading of the Bible suggests)? Although these two questions are rather different, they are connected. For example, if it could be shown that the world was young, common descent would in effect be disproved.

Christians today tend to fall into one of three ‘camps’. Theistic evolutionists (sometimes referred to as ‘evolutionary creationists’) embrace common descent and an old Earth. Young-Earth creationists reject common descent and an old Earth. Many Christians seek a middle way between these positions by rejecting common descent but embracing an old Earth.

It is often difficult for ordinary Christians to navigate their way through this maze of different opinions. The issues, both theological and scientific, can seem formidably complex and many believers feel ill-equipped to evaluate them.

The debate about the origin of the universe, of life and of human beings rages as fiercely today as it did at the time of Charles Darwin.

But I think there is a way to assess these ideas that most Christians can grasp, and that is to compare the relative sequence of events given in Genesis with the relative sequence of events according to the old-Earth, evolutionary model of origins. For contrary to common opinion, it is actually the age question that has the greater theological implications (rather than the ancestry question), and that is why I am making it the focus of this short series.

In this article, I begin with an overview of Earth’s history according to an ‘old Earth’ model, and then present three ways in which this conflicts with the sequence of events described in Genesis, with more to come next week.

History According to the Old-Earth Model

The conventional scientific view is that the Earth is about 4.6 billion years old and that its geological development has been immensely long and gradual. The multi-million-year dates assigned to Earth history come from the application of radiometric dating, a set of methods that uses the decay of naturally occurring radioactive isotopes as a kind of ‘clock’ to date the rocks and minerals of the Earth’s crust. The rock layers, with their enclosed fossils, are thus said to document the history of life over long eras of time.

Figure 1: The standard geological column representing the history of life on Earth according to the old-Earth model. Fossil organisms typical of each geological era are shown (‘my’ stands for ‘millions of years ago’). After Garner, P, 2009. The New Creationism: Building Scientific Theories on a Biblical Foundation. Evangelical Press, Darlington, p195.

This understanding of Earth history can be summarised as follows (Figure 1).

• Precambrian rocks are considered to be the oldest rocks on Earth, deposited between 4,000 million and 541 million years ago. Most Precambrian fossils are micro-organisms resembling today’s bacteria and blue-green algae. Dome-shaped structures called stromatolites, thought to have formed when sediment became trapped by sticky algal mats, are abundant in Precambrian sediments. Towards the end of the Precambrian Eon, the first multi-celled organisms are thought to have appeared – represented by some strange segmented and frond-like creatures first discovered in the Ediacara Hills of South Australia.
  
• Palaeozoic (‘early life’) rocks follow the Precambrian and are said to have been deposited between 541 and 252 million years ago. The beginning of the Palaeozoic Era was marked by the sudden appearance of many hard-bodied animals including sponges, brachiopods (‘lamp shells’) and trilobites. By the middle of the Palaeozoic Era, fish had become numerous in the oceans, and plants and animals had begun to populate the land. By the end of the era, the first large reptiles and modern plants (conifers) had appeared.

Something we can all do is compare the relative sequence of events given in Genesis with the relative sequence of events according to the old-Earth, evolutionary model.

• Mesozoic (‘middle life’) rocks are thought to have been deposited between 252 and 66 million years ago. This was the ‘age of the reptiles’. Life on the land was dominated by the dinosaurs, in the skies by flying reptiles called pterosaurs, and in the oceans by aquatic reptiles such as ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs and mosasaurs. Ammonites (squid-like creatures in coiled shells) were also common in the warm, shallow seas. The mammals, birds and flowering plants (angiosperms) also made their first appearance during this time.
  
• Cenozoic (‘recent life’) rocks are said to have been deposited between 66 million years ago and the present day. During the Cenozoic, the flowering plants are represented by a great array of trees, shrubs and vines. This was also the era in which most of the modern groups of birds and mammals appeared, as well as the first humans.

Many Christians suppose that there are few, if any, theological consequences of embracing this standard account of Earth history, with its time-scale of hundreds of millions of years.

But in fact there are massive theological difficulties, some of which I am going to highlight in what follows. I will do this by asking the question: what theology would we have to accept as true if we did embrace the old-Earth time-scale?

1. Agony, Death and Bloodshed Before Sin

First, we would have to accept that physical agony, death and bloodshed have been around for hundreds of millions of years, long before humans appeared or sin entered the world.

It hardly needs saying that fossils are the remains of dead things and therefore provide prima facie evidence of physical death. Conventional dating places the first appearance of animals in the fossil record at least as far back as 541 million years ago, probably earlier.¹ But even if we restrict our considerations to sentient beings capable of experiencing pain, evidence of agony and death goes back a long way.

Consider mosasaurs, a group of large marine reptiles, now extinct, preserved in the Upper Cretaceous deposits of North America and Europe. Conventionally, these fossils are 92-66 million years old and long pre-date the first appearance of modern humans (Homo sapiens) around 300,000-200,000 years ago. Many mosasaur skeletons show evidence of physical trauma, including bite wounds² and bone fractures.^3,4 These injuries would have been extremely painful when they were inflicted.

What theology would we have to accept as true if we did embrace the old-Earth time-scale?

Another dramatic example is the mass-death assemblage of horses, camels and rhinos at Ashfall Fossil Beds in Nebraska, USA, conventionally dated to about 12 million years ago. Bone lesions in these animals show that they died slow and agonizing deaths by asphyxiation as the result of inhaling volcanic dust in the aftermath of an eruption.⁵

Ashfall Fossil Beds: a Teleoceras female and her calf.But such evidence of agony and death long before there were humans runs counter to the biblical claim that death and bloodshed came into the world as a consequence of Adam’s sin (Gen 3:19; Rom 5:12; 1 Cor 15:21-22). When Adam fell, God told him he would return to the dust from which he had been taken (Gen 3:19), the ground was cursed (Gen 3:17) and Creation itself was subjected to corruption (Rom 8:20-22). And it is this causal connection between sin and physical death that explains why it was necessary for Christ to suffer and die physically to pay sin’s penalty (Matt 16:21; Mark 8:31; Luke 24:46).

As for the animals, they were caught up in the Fall because they were part of Adam’s dominion (Gen 1:28). When he fell, he dragged the rest of Creation down with him. The original diet of both humans and animals was vegetarian (Gen 1:29-30; cf. Isa 11:6-8, 65:25), and carnivory (meat-eating) is explicitly mentioned only after the Flood (Gen 9:3).

Indeed, the account of the Flood highlights the unnaturalness of animal violence, for we are told that the destruction of “all flesh” included the animals as well as the humans (Gen 7:15-16, 21), because both were corrupt and violent (Gen 6:11-13).

2. Disease and Sickness Before Sin

Second, we would have to accept that disease and sickness have been around for hundreds of millions of years, long before humans appeared or sin entered the world.

Clear evidence of pathology can be seen in the fossil record of many organisms, as we have already seen in the case of the animals that died of lung damage in Nebraska. In fact, the study of ancient disease is a discipline in its own right, known as palaeopathology.

Consider mosasaurs again. Many fossil specimens have pathological features of the skeleton, such as fused vertebrae,⁶ and some of these animals even show evidence of decompression sickness associated with diving.^7,8

An old-Earth model requires us to accept that pain, death, bloodshed and disease were around long before humans appeared or sin entered the world.

Bone abnormalities are common in certain types of dinosaurs, with one specimen displaying no fewer than eight maladies of its forelimb, including a permanently deformed third finger.⁹ Painful conditions such as malignant tumours, ripped tendons, broken teeth and arthritis are also known to have afflicted dinosaurs.^10,11,12 But such evidence of sickness and disease long before there were humans runs counter to the biblical claim that in the beginning God made a “very good” world that was later spoilt by Adam’s sin.

During Creation Week, God expressed his satisfaction with the things he had made by stating six times that they were “good” (Gen 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25). Upon completing his work, he crowned it all with a seventh, even stronger declaration – that the finished creation was “very good” (Gen 1:31). Sorrow, suffering and death were not part of this “very good” world but came about as a consequence of Adam’s sin.

It was Christ, the last Adam (1 Cor 15:45), who came to undo what Adam did. Christ’s healing ministry (Matt 8:16-17; cf. Isa 53:5, Ps 103:2-3), culminating in his atoning death on the Cross, points forward to the day when God will wipe away every tear, and sorrow, pain and death will be no more (Rev 21:4, 22:2).

3. Natural Disasters Before Sin

Third, we would have to accept that natural disasters, such as famines, floods, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, have been around for hundreds of millions of years, long before humans appeared or sin entered the world.

Indeed, the fossil record is largely the product of such natural disasters, more being accomplished geologically during short-lived catastrophic events than in many years of quiescence.¹³ Some of these ancient natural disasters are known to have dwarfed any experienced in the present day.

The Chile earthquake of 1960 was the most powerful ever recorded on a seismograph.¹⁴ But much larger earthquakes would have accompanied the formation of large asteroid impact craters, such as the ones at Popigai in Siberia (conventionally formed 35 million years ago) or Sudbury in Ontario (conventionally formed 1.8 billion years ago).¹⁵

The most violent volcanic eruption in recent human history took place at Taupo, New Zealand, in about AD 186, and it left behind a pumice layer up to 1.8m thick with a volume of about 24 cubic kilometres.¹⁶ But much larger volcanic eruptions are known from the geological record, evidenced by deposits tens to hundreds of metres thick and with volumes exceeding 1,000 cubic kilometres.¹⁷

During Creation Week, God stated six times that what he had made was “good” and crowned it all with a seventh, even stronger declaration – that the finished creation was “very good”.

A popular Christian apologetic is to say that natural disasters such as these are a consequence of the Fall of man, and that they were not part of the world that God originally created. For example, here is what Tim Keller says in his book, The Reason for God:

Human beings are so integral to the fabric of things that when human beings turned from God the entire warp and woof of the world unravelled. Disease, genetic disorders, famine, natural disasters, ageing and death itself are as much the result of sin as are oppression, war, crime and violence.¹⁸ (my emphasis)

But this apologetic is baseless if such natural disasters were occurring long before the origin of humans or of human sin. In such a scenario, we could not say that natural disasters are consequences of living in a fallen world.¹⁹ Instead, we would have to acknowledge them as a normal part of how the world functions and that it had been this way from the beginning. This also seems to run counter to the biblical claim that the world as originally created was “very good” (Gen 1:31).

Next week: Three more theological problems presented by an ‘old-Earth’ model.

Author bio: Paul Garner is a full-time researcher and lecturer for the Biblical Creation Trust (www.biblicalcreationtrust.org). He has an MSc in Geoscience from University College London, where he specialised in palaeobiology, and is a Fellow of the Geological Society of London. He has taken part in research funded by the Institute for Creation Research and has written numerous papers, popular articles and a book.

References

1 dos Reis, M, Thawornwattana, Y, Angelis, K, Telford, MJ, Donoghue, PCJ and Yang, Z, 2015. Uncertainty in the timing of origin of animals and the limits of precision in molecular timescales. Current Biology, 25:2939-2950.

2 Everhart, MJ, 2008. A bitten skull of Tylosaurus kansasensis (Squamata: Mosasauridae) and a review of mosasaur-on-mosasaur pathology in the fossil record. Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science, 111:251-262.

3 Schulp, AS, Walenkamp, GHIM, Hofman, PAM, Rothschild, BM and JWM Jagt, 2004. Rib fracture in Prognathodon saturator (Mosasauridae, Late Cretaceous). Netherlands Journal of Geosciences / Geologie en Mijnbouw, 83:251-254.

4 Lingham-Soliar, T, 2004. Palaeopathology and injury in extinct mosasaurs (Lepidosauromorpha, Squamata) and implications for modern reptiles. Lethaia, 37:255-262.

5 Tucker, ST, Otto, RE, Joeckel, RM and Voorhies, MR, 2014. The geology and paleontology of Ashfall Fossil Beds, a late Miocene (Clarendonian) mass-death assemblage, Antelope County and adjacent Knox County, Nebraska, USA, pp1-22 in Korus, JT (ed), Geologic Field Trips along the Boundary between the Central Lowlands and Great Plains: 2014 Meeting of the GSA North-Central Section. Geological Society of America Field Guide 36.

6 Martin, JE and Bell, Jr, GL, 1995. Abnormal caudal vertebrae of Mosasauridae from Late Cretaceous marine deposits of South Dakota. Proceedings of the South Dakota Academy of Science, 74:23-27.

7 Rothschild, BM and Martin, L, 1987. Avascular necrosis: occurrence in diving Cretaceous mosasaurs. Science, 236:75-77.

8 Martin, LD and BM Rothschild, 1989. Paleopathology and diving mosasaurs. American Scientist, 77:460-467.

9 Senter, P and Juengst, SL, 2016. Record-breaking pain: the largest number and variety of forelimb bone maladies in a theropod dinosaur. PLoS ONE, 11(2):e0149140.

10 Rothschild, BM, Tanke, D, Hershkovitz, I and Schultz, M, 1998. Mesozoic neoplasia: origins of hemangioma in the Jurassic. Lancet, 351:1862.

11 Rothschild, BM, Witzke, BJ and Hershkovitz, I, 1999. Metastatic cancer in the Jurassic. Lancet, 354:398.

12 Rothschild, BM, 1997. Dinosaurian paleopathology, pp426-448 in Farlow, JO and Brett-Surman, MK (eds), The Complete Dinosaur. Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis.

13 Ager, D, 1993. The New Catastrophism: The Importance of the Rare Event in Geological History. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

14 Kanamori, H, 1977. The energy release of great earthquakes. Journal of Geophysical Research, 82:2981-2987.

15 Clube, SVM and Napier, WM, 1982. The role of episodic bombardment in geophysics. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 57:251-262.

16 Walker, GPL, 1980. The Taupo pumice: product of the most powerful known (ultraplinian) eruption? Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, 8:69-94.

17 Heiken, G, 1979. Pyroclastic flow deposits. American Scientist, 67:564-571.

18 Keller, T, 2008. The Reason for God. Hodder and Stoughton, London, p170.

19 One author, understanding the force of this objection to the old-Earth chronology, has sought to explain the hundreds of millions of years of death, suffering and other ‘natural evils’ before there were humans as the effects of the curse applied retroactively! See Dembski, WA, 2009. The End of Christianity. Broadman and Holman, Nashville, Tennessee.