The four previous articles on geology and the history of life on earth presented evidence that contradicts the conclusions of most modern "scientific creationists." The geologic record unmistakably reveals large amounts of time and definite progressive sequences of living organisms throughout that time. Should this realization shake our faith in a creating God? Does it in any way give more credence to mindless evolution than to purposeful creation? It should not.

Rather, we should use this information to help clarify the history of the past, the nature of God and the real meaning of the early chapters of Genesis. Rather than fight facts and reality, let us use them to broaden our understanding of God and the Bible. The God defined by the Bible is a God of truth. We must, in humility, realize that we do not yet have the full truth from either the Bible or the physical record. We still "see through a glass, darkly."

How can the realities of the geologic record be understood from a biblical, creative perspective?

Some aspects of the history of the earth and fossil life forms are not even hinted at in Genesis. This should not surprise us. We know that the nature, structure and size of the universe are not explained in the book of Genesis. That is not its purpose.

Nevertheless, some people concluded from the Genesis creation account that the earth was the center of the universe with all other heavenly bodies revolving around it. People believed this for hundreds of years because they believed that the Bible taught it. People changed their understanding of the Bible because they reexamined it in the light of facts gathered through scientific investigation. The facts helped them realize that people had misinterpreted the Bible by making it say more than it was meant to.

We must be willing to do the same with the geologic record.

Is using information from the physical record to help understand the meaning of Genesis somehow sacrilegious? Are the physical facts deceptive, while what we read into the Genesis record is the truth? Should we try to defend the God of truth with explanations that are physically erroneous? This is what some well-meaning "scientific creationists" are unwittingly striving to do. We must not follow their error.

If physical facts appear to contradict religious beliefs, we should re-examine both. The physical and spiritual facts should fit when we understand both. We must be able to correlate the physical and the theological if we are to make our message meaningful to knowledgeable people and if we are to give our children a solid basis for belief, a faith that will not be weakened when they learn scientific facts.

It is clear from the geologic record that God did not invent and create for the first time all the world's animals 6,000 years ago (or 10,000 or 40,000 years ago). Most modern animals were living on earth long before that. We might hypothesize that God recently recreated certain animals after the pattern of animals that had lived long before. Such a "re-creation" theory would be almost impossible to prove or disprove from the physical record.

To understand the problem we are dealing with, we should briefly review the nature of scientific investigation. Science, by definition, deals only with the physical — whatever can be detected and measured by physical means. It cannot prove or disprove a spiritual realm. Spiritual matters are totally outside the reach of its investigations and out of its frame of reference. With science you may be able to prove what type of organism existed, when it existed and how it changed through time. But you cannot prove how it came into existence, or why, or what made it change.

Faith, on the other hand, is a conclusion or decision based on judgment. Faith must be modified and redefined by truth, whether that truth comes from physical or spiritual sources. It should be based on the best evidence available. (For example, we do not have faith that the earth is flat, even though some biblical verses have sometimes been interpreted to imply such.) Faith is generally not susceptible to proof or disproof by scientific methods. Faith is the substance of things not seen. Science is the substance of things seen.

Consider John 20:26: Thomas was given physical evidence to bolster his faith. A step removed from this is those who believe even though they have not seen (verse 29). They believe because they hear about it from another source. They cannot verify it by their own experience, but this does not mean their faith is invalid. Christ's disciples were to be witnesses of physical events to build others' faith (Acts 1:8).

Pure science does not accept something as proof unless the measurements and observations can be repeated. Faith requires judgment as to what evidence is acceptable, since direct, firsthand physical evidence is not always available. Abraham believed that he would have a son, despite the physical (scientific) improbability. He had faith that God had the ability to make it happen and that his promise was reliable. Technically, I may not be able to scientifically prove that it was actually Abraham Lincoln who delivered the Gettysburg Address, but, based on the facts available, there is no basis for doubt in my mind that he did so.

One of the basic ground rules of the scientific method is that any direct spiritual or supernatural involvement in any system is automatically excluded from consideration. It doesn't mean that it is not a part of reality, it just means that it is not a part of science. Note the honest and candid statement of a prominent American vertebrate paleontologist (now deceased):

Philosophers and other non-scientists have often suggested that evolution may have been due to some supernatural agency or some mysterious "drive" within the animal itself. No one can prove, of course, that this is not the case. But as scientists we attempt to explain the phenomena of nature in terms of natural laws before resorting to supernatural interpretation (A.S. Romer, The Vertebrate Story, page 5, emphasis mine).

Functional science, however, is not without a large measure of faith, bias and personal judgment. The game of science is to be played only with physical facts, repeatable observations and physical rules. It cannot consider, prove or disprove a Creator's existence. One may, however, look at the objects studied by science and make a judgment about the existence of a Creator.

We must admit that the scientific process of eliminating the supernatural from consideration has allowed much superstition to be eliminated from Western society. The universe indeed functions by natural law without the constant need for supernatural intervention to cause every little thing to happen.

But has the scientific approach been extended too far? While it may be "scientific" to eliminate a Creator and the supernatural from consideration in studying the natural world, is it rational to do so? No! Denying consideration of the supernatural and spiritual realm is not rational if there is a clear possibility that they exist.

While God and the supernatural do not interact with the physical functioning of the material world in the way thought by medieval theologians and alchemists, that does not rule out their existence. It would be illogical to say that past misunderstandings about a spiritual realm in general, and the story of Genesis in particular, should be reason to totally eliminate God and the supernatural from our thinking. But this is what many scientists have done.

What if we retain God in our knowledge?

The creative process may have been much more complicated and lengthy than previously believed. The story told in Genesis may cover only a small portion of the total creation process. (Or it may have a completely different meaning. That will have to be explored elsewhere.)

I propose that it makes more sense to evaluate the fossil record as the record of a creative-development process by a supernatural mind (or minds) over a long period of time.

Most groups of organisms in the fossil record show much modification and change through time. Horses and the elephant family are examples of this change over time. Dinosaurs progressed through similar changes. Fish, birds and other mammal groups did likewise. ("Living fossils" are the exception, not the rule.) Even the physical body of humans seems to have been developed through a very long time span, based on the fossil record of hominids. It is beyond the scope of this article to illustrate the changes in any group, but such material is available from many books on geology, paleontology and anthropology.

An apt analogy of the changes observed in the fossils can be made with the development of nearly any human technology. The first automobiles, for example, were carts with engines. Later ones had fenders, enclosed bodies, spring suspensions, braking systems, advanced steering mechanisms, transmissions, etc. One by one, additions were made: electric starters, automatic transmissions, air conditioning, etc. This was a developmental process that took time. It did not develop itself — it was the product of many creative minds thinking, designing, and building.

Living organisms are different from machines in that they reproduce themselves (an even greater feat than man's technological developments), but, contrary to what the theory of evolution teaches, reproduction does not guarantee improvement and development of new models without outside intervention. The patterns of change shown in the fossil record are similar to the development seen in nearly all human inventions. The development patterns in the fossil record make more sense if evaluated from the standpoint of changes having been made by a rational mind rather than by random chance.

Did God have other beings working on developing the creation under his supervision? Possibly so; this would mean that God was not the author of developmental dead ends. Were other purposes being fulfilled by such a developmental process? Could this have been the best way for God to go about fashioning a complex, interrelated biosystem? These questions about the Creator are unanswered. But we do have some answers about the creation.

The fossil record reveals that the general design of modern animals was carried out over a long time span. Many other types were developed and then allowed to go extinct — some after considerable modification. The creation and development of forms was an ongoing, interactive process. In some cases it appears that genetic changes were made in such a way that allowed almost a continuous developmental sequence of fossil forms. Other lines have many "missing links" (some of which may be due only to lack of a fossilizing environment). Others may be due to true design "jumps" similar to those seen in technological developments.

The fossil record of a creative-development process, including both gradual developments and creative jumps, would probably look much the same as the one left if evolution had occurred.

When we look at many major classes of living organisms in the fossil record and consider their change over time, a common pattern emerges. There is a progressive development. This is seen in many groups of fish, amphibians, reptiles, dinosaurs and mammals. Individual groups like the horses, elephants, primates, rodents and whales allow an even more precise picture of the development process.

The nature of the changes over time vary with each group and line of organisms. Any specific group would have to be studied individually to understand its unique pattern. However, the general model of progressive development with time is the nearly unanimous pattern observed in numerous groups of fossil organisms.

The question is not whether such changes occurred. The fossil record abundantly verifies that they did. The important question is, What caused the changes we observe? Are they the product of random genetic change, operated on by natural selective processes, as evolutionists would have us believe? Or are they the result of conscious, directed change by supernatural intelligence?

For both scientist and layman, the answer selected will most likely be based on faith and judgment rather than on scientific fact. By judgment I concur with David, "Only the fool has said in his heart, There is no god." However, the facts do not fit an ex nihilo (from nothing) creation 6,000 or 10,000 years ago. Nor can all the facts be fitted to a "two-flood model," as some have attempted to do.

The ultimate question is, Which conclusion is the most reasonable, logical and likely to be true? Which conclusion do the physical and biblical facts best fit and support? That calls for judgment, guided by faith. The just must live by faith — but so must the evolutionist, the agnostic and the atheist. They each live by their own particular faith.

How can we correlate a creative-development process, clearly seen in geology, with the Genesis 1-2 creation accounts? That is not entirely clear to the theologians and scientists studying the question, but a number of options have been offered.

• Genesis 1 and 2 may be poetic or parabolic in nature, and God may not have intended these chapters to to be taken as a literal historical narrative. Jesus spoke many parables. Were they all real historic events? Do we demand a literal historic interpretation of each story? Or were his parables merely reasonable stories carefully constructed to illustrate a specific spiritual point? Was the emphasis on historicity or on meaning and lesson to be conveyed? Should the early chapters of Genesis be viewed from a similar perspective?

• The Genesis creation story may be a coded account that can encompass millions of years when properly interpreted and decoded. Many have worked on schemes to extend the meaning in such a fashion. Some make the individual days stand for a thousand years or even a geologic age. Others have worked up similar schemes in which the Genesis day indicates the termination of a specific creative process that may have been going on for many thousands of years. Under this scheme the creative events of some of the individual days were concurrent, not linear. (Most suggestions I have seen, however, multiply the correlation problems with the physical record rather than solve them.)

• The primary purpose of Genesis 1 and 2 may have been merely to tell the Israelites that it was God who created what others were worshiping as gods (sun, moon, animals of various sorts, etc.). Its statements may not have been meant to be a literal historic description of the creation process. This is only slightly different than the first point. In this case, the purpose was to explain that God was Creator of all, not to give a blow-by-blow description of the creation chronology.

• Genesis 1 and 2 may be referring to only a limited area of the earth's surface, to a select group of humanity and to a limited group of animals, "recreated" at that time.

We are a great distance from the cultural setting of the writings of Genesis 1 and 2. There are still more ways to understand the meaning of the Genesis accounts.

We should not put a meaning on the Genesis account that directly contradicts physical evidence from geology and paleontology. To do so would discredit the Bible to those who are aware of the geological evidence. Darwin was driven to evolution by erroneous religious dogmas on the meaning of the book of Genesis. We should not lay such a stumblingblock before a world we hope to reach. We cannot represent the God of truth with proposals that are obvious scientific error.

Richard Burky, 1993

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