EXPLORING CHRISTAINITY: The three greatest acts of Creation

EXPLORING CHRISTIANITY - SCIENCE

THE BIBLE
Can we trust a book written 2000 years ago?

EYEWITNESS
Did the writers of the New Testament get their picture of Jesus right?

GOD - MAN
Is Jesus really God?

RESURRECTION
Did Jesus really rise from the dead?

RELIGIONS
With so many religions, why Christianity?

SUFFERING
If there is a God, why is there so much suffering?

TRINITY
Understanding the Trinity.

SCIENCE
The complementary nature of Science & Christianity.

FORGIVENESS
What it is and why it matters?

GUIDANCE
How does God guide?

REPENTANCE
What it is and why you can't get to heaven without it.

BORN AGAIN
What does it mean to be converted and born again?

SAVING FAITH
The kind of faith that will get you to heaven

ASSURANCE
Can I know for sure that I am going to heaven?

TRUTH
What is truth and does it matter?

MORALITY
Does it matter how we live? A Christian view of morality.

THE CHURCH
God's vision for his family, the Church. A call to the churches of the new millennium.

PURPOSE
How can I find a great purpose for living?

IDENTITY
Who am I; Finding my true identity as a human being and as a child of God.

SELF-ESTEEM
How can I feel good about my self? The Christian basis for proper sel-esteem.

LIFE AFTER DEATHChristianity's Hope & Challenge.

THE CROSS
Why did Jesus Die? What the Bible says about the Cross.

Grace
The importance of grace in the New Testament.

The three greatest acts of creation

A significant Hebrew word bara is used five times in Genesis 1. In the Old Testament the form of the word that occurs in this chapter is used only of God's activity, implying in its usage that it refers to acts of creation that are beyond the scope of human ability. Though not necessarily meaning to "create out of nothing", it has the concept of "initiating something new".

This word is used in Genesis, 1:1, of the creation of the physical universe - the creation of matter. In verse 21 it refers to the creation of living things - the creation of life. And it occurs three times in verse 27 - referring to the creation of human beings, the most important of his creations. Here we have God's three greatest acts of creation.

The creation of matter

Over the last few decades scientists have probed some of the amazing properties of the atom. We are told that this fantastic thing, of which all matter is composed, is made up of a central nucleus with electrons whizzing around it. If it could be blown up to the size of a football field, its nucleus would be about the size of a fly in the centre. Where did the power come from that holds it together? Nobel prize winner, Arthur H. Compton, declared that actino-uranium is theoretically capable of yielding 235 billion volts per atom. It is significant that the Bible states of Jesus; "all things were created by him and for him...and in him all things hold together" (Colossians 1:16,17).

We are told that the atom contains wonderful things such as leptons, muons, bosons, neutrinos, photons, gravitons, psions, neutrons and goodness knows what else. Maybe reality is somewhat like the jingle "Big fleas have little fleas upon their backs bite 'em. Little fleas have smaller fleas and so ad infinitum!" However, scientists now tell us they think they have got down to the smallest particle from which protons and neutrons are made - the quark. There are six types of quark: up and down, charm and strange, bottom and top - with their anti-quarks. These are stuck together with gluons! The last of these, the top quark, was discovered in 1995.

My question is: "Did the atom, with its amazing design, consistent throughout the universe, evolve?" The story is told of a Hyde Park orator who was attacking belief in God. He argued that the world just happened. As he spoke he was hit by a soft tomato. "Who threw that?" he demanded. A Cockney voice replied, "No one threw it - it threw itself." As G. K. Chesterton has put it:

It is absurd for the evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for God to make everything out of nothing, and then pretend that it is not more unthinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything.

The creation of life

The simplest form of independent life is the single-cell bacterium. Bacteria have been around for several billion years and though possessing an amazing adaptability, unknown in larger creatures, have shown no sign of evolution into another species. Bacteria are amazingly complex organisms and are of the same design as all other living cells of which higher life forms are made. A single cell is a wonderfully complex thing.

"The probability of an evolutionary origin of life is equal to the probability that a tornado, sweeping though a junkyard, would assemble a Boeing 747" Sir F. Hoyle

Dr Michael Denton, a medical doctor and molecular biologist, in seeking to convey the complexity of a single living cell, uses the following illustration in his book Evolution, A Theory in Crisis:

...to grasp the reality as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is twenty kilometres in diameter and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York. What we would then see would be an object of unparalleled complexity and adaptive design. On the surface of the cell we would see millions of openings, like the port holes of a vast space ship, opening and closing to allow a continual stream of materials to flow in and out. If we were to enter one of these openings we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity...

According to Princeton biologist, J. T. Bonner, an average-sized cell contains about 200,000 billion molecules. In The Ideas of Biology he says:

...it seems easier to imagine a single cell evolving into complex animals and plants than it does to imagine a group of chemical substances evolving into a cell.

If we want to consider the possibility of this happening, some of the factors we would have to consider are:

The importance of proteins in the structure of the cell. These are among the most complex molecules known, with very precise molecular structure, and with molecular weights up to 50,000. Proteins may contain 200 - 300 amino acids, which must be exactly the right sort in exactly the right order. Some proteins have thousands of amino acids and molecular weights of hundreds of thousands. The APC protein has 2,843 amino acids and is 312,000 in molecular weight. Amino acids come in approximately 20 different types with either left-handed or right-handed shape. All those in our bodies are left-handed.

The complexity of the DNA molecule which every cell possesses. The 'simple' Escherichia coli bacterium (living in our gut) is a 'prokaryotic' single cell (with no nucleus), but has a wound-up DNA strand which is 1,000 times its own length and has 3,000 genes made of some 4 million base pairs. RNA is a shorter, usually single-stranded molecule, but still with large numbers of nucleotide bases.

Proteins and enzymes do not reproduce without the corresponding genetic materials, the nucleic acids DNA and RNA, yet the latter cannot function without the former. Which came first? The old chicken and egg problem!

Without the protective membrane surrounding the cell, which is a very complex structure in itself, it could not survive.

All life must have food of some sort. The first life form would have needed the capacity of either photosynthesis or chemosynthesis to create food from chemicals, or else have had access to organic food from some source. Otherwise it would perish on the spot.

Many have sought to show the impossibility of all this happening by chance. In 1981, Sir Fred Hoyle, mathematician, astronomer, and a long time anti-theist and evolutionist, together with Chandra Wickramasinghe, head of the Department of Applied Mathematics and Astronomy at University College, Cardiff, and a lifelong Buddhist-atheist - brainwashed, he reported, into believing that any concept of God must be excluded from science - calculated it to be one chance out of 1040,000! (That is one chance out of 1 followed by 40,000 zeros). However, statistics tend to become rather meaningless at this level. Hoyle has declared that the probability of an evolutionary origin of life is equal to the probability that a tornado, sweeping though a junkyard, would assemble a Boeing 747. He says:

A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.

However, having said all this, it is important to point out that if one day science did determine how matter originated from nothing, or how living cells developed from a chemical soup, it would not disprove that God was behind it all. Our faith must be based on a surer foundation than that! More of that later.

The creation of humans

The third use of the Hebrew bara in Genesis 1 concerns the creation of humans. As regards the process by which humans were created, and the time scale involved, I believe it is a wise person who keeps an open mind. There are still too many unknown factors. Some believe the Adam and Eve of Genesis 1 were the first humans, as seemingly indicated by Romans 5:15-21 and 1 Corinthians 15:45-49. Others believe they are representative of humans living at that time.

"We were created with God-like qualities, able to enjoy a vital relationship with the living God who is spirit"

It does seem clear that they, or at least their children, grew crops and kept domestic animals. Our present information suggests that people first developed these skills in the Middle East around 10,000 years ago. The earliest known localised settlements are Jericho in the Jordan valley and Catal Huyuk in modern Turkey. What about the hunter-gatherers who appear to have existed well before this time? Were they truly human?

In seeking to resolve this question it is important to note what the Bible does say and what it doesn't say. One thing it is very clear about is the spiritual side of human nature. The New Testament, particularly, often refers to our "body", our "soul" and our "spirit". Paul can write, "May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" (I Thessalonians 5:23). Both the Hebrew and Greek words for "soul" are used of animals in the Bible (e.g. Hebrew: Genesis 1:20 - the same word as is used of Adam in Genesis 2:7 - and Greek: Revelation 16:3). The Hebrew idea of "soul" is somewhat similar to our word "personality." It is that part of me that thinks (intelligence), feels (emotions) and makes decisions (will). Animals possess these qualities, though not so highly developed as in humans. Animals, however, are never spoken of as having "spirit".

The emphasis in Genesis is not on how humans were created, but on what they are and why they were created. We were created with God-like qualities, able to enjoy a vital relationship with the living God who is spirit (John 4:24), and created with clear responsibilities over the rest of creation. God is the one "who lays the foundation of the earth, and who forms the spirit of man within him" (Zechariah 12:1). It has never seemed important to me whether one believes that God created a human-like being over millions of years, and then at a certain point planted the "spirit" within him, or whether he started from scratch and did the whole job in a brief moment of time. Either way, God was creating something entirely new. I believe Genesis 2:7 can be taken either way as no time scale is given. If you believe the former, it explains why, for instance, our skeletal structure is so similar to other mammals, or why our DNA is so similar to that of a chimpanzee. Concerning the problem of the early hunter-gatherers, you can't find out whether a creature had a spirit or not by looking at its bones!

Since I first published this booklet (1997) till the present (2005) there has been an amazing explosion of knowledge of the human genome. As Graeme Finlay explains in his excellent booklet God's Books: Genetics & Genesis in the Science and Faith Series (Published by TELOS Books, P. O. Box 56 167, Dominion Road, Auckland 1030, New Zealand):

Each cell in our bodies has 46 chromosomes. Each chromosome contains a single DNA molecule. Each DNA molecule consists of four building blocks ('bases') designated A, G, T, and C. Tens or hundreds of millions of these bases are strung together in the DNA molecule of a single chromosome. Our total genetic endowment consists of 3 billion such building blocks. The order ('sequence') of the bases specifies the information that is required for the construction of an organism. The much-publicised human genome project has used biochemical techniques and computers to place in order most of the 3 billion A, G, T, and C units that comprise the totality of our genetic information (our 'genome').

These DNA sequences are a record of our genetic history. The information has revealed that our DNA molecules have undergone many structural alterations in the past. Some of these changes are minor, such as single base changes. Some are very large rearrangements involving segments thousands or millions of bases long. Instances are known in which the orientation of segments of chromosomes has been reversed ('inversions'). New genes have been formed by copying and modifying old ones ('duplications'). Old genes fade away (degenerate to 'pseudogenes'). DNA of genetic parasites may be added to chromosomal DNA ('insertions'). All these are random and unique events. The interesting fact is that we share particular duplications, pseudogenes, and insertions ('errors') with other primate species. This establishes that we and the other species possessing a uniquely arising genetic construction are related by descent from an ancestor in which the particular genetic change occurred.

For those who like technical information, Graeme Finlay gives the following example of many that could be given:

The S100A7 gene family comprises several members because of a duplication that produced a 33,000 base segment (region 1) and a 31,000 base segment (region 3) separated by a linker of 11,000 bases. Besides the S100A7 genes, over 20 specific insertions of genetic parasites are shared between regions 1 and 3, proving that the two regions were generated by duplication of one progenitor segment of DNA. A specific rearrangement allows region 1 and region 3 to be distinguished, and the two regions are present in chimpanzees as well as humans. It may be concluded that the duplication occurred before the chimpanzee lineage diverged from the human one. Such duplications....are common. The human Y chromosome has eight such duplications, and at least six of these are possessed in common with other great apes (chimpanzees, gorillas).

Similarly, many examples are known in which multiple primate species share a particular pseudogene which in every case has the same disruptions to its structure. It is unlikely that the same disruptions would occur independently in many species. We could not have stronger evidence that this same pseudogene was inherited from an ancestor in which the gene was knocked out. In addition to our 30,000 or so human genes, we have 10-20,000 such derelict genes. These are degraded remains of genes which are still active in other species, or scrambled copies, derived from authentic genes that retain their protein-coding function in our own DNA.

In his booklet Evolving Creation in the same series, Finlay sums up this and other evidence as follows:

The rapid development of genetics has conclusively demonstrated that humanity has evolved from primate progenitors. We share common ancestors with chimps, with all the apes, with the simians, and with prosimians such as the tarsier and lemur...Not only does this genetic evidence establish the evolutionary route of our own biological history, it also demonstrates that macroevolution has occurred.

This evidence, of course, says nothing whatever about whether all this happened because an intelligent being such as the Christian God was in some way involved in the process and planned it all, or whether it merely happened "by chance". It merely reveals what has actually happened. We have to look elsewhere to answer such questions. Neither does it have anything to say about the implantation of the human spirit which I have referred to in the previous chapter.