Thursday, April 12, 2007

Religious and Science Harmony: Genesis 1:21-26

This past Family Home Evening my wife taught a lesson on the Creation of this Earth. She went through each day, explaining what was created. As she did this in a manner that our 3 year-old daughter could understand I realized I had never paid attention to the order in which the Earth and its inhabitants were created. As I listened to her lesson I made a few observations that I would like to compare with the theory of evolution.

Please read the below passage of scripture and pay special attention to the sequence of events:

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.

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. -Genesis 1:21-26

Creatures of the sea>Creatures of the land>Humans

The evolution timeline follows a very similar sequence. The first multicellular organisms to form through evolution appeared in oceans. There is believed to have been 500 million years of fish and proto-amphibians.

After the formation of the ozone layer excursions onto land were made possible. Through evolution land creatures rapidly filled the earth.

After billions of years of the evolution of land creatures the human species evolved into what it is today.

I find it interesting that the sequence of evolution and the sequence of biblical creation hold many similarities. I am sure my comparison has holes (for instance where do birds fit in), but as a non-expert of evolution I am appreciating both the scientific views and religious writings of the history of this Earth.

4 comments:

Aaron said...

Interesting note. The writer at the blog Spherical Chickens (can't remember her name) wrote an interesting piece on evolution last week. You might want to browse her posts; I liked her stance on reconciling the scientific observations with revealed doctrine.

Bored in Vernal said...

Drew, Speaking of the sequence of events of the Creation, I've wondered ever since 1982 when Bruce R. McConkie wrote this article, why is the order of events different in the temple account? Bruce R. says, "Our three accounts of the Creation are the Mosaic, the Abrahamic, and the one presented in the temples. Each of these stems back to the Prophet Joseph Smith. The Mosaic and Abrahamic accounts place the creative events on the same successive days. We shall follow these scriptural recitations in our analysis. The temple account, for reasons that are apparent to those familiar with its teachings, has a different division of events." He makes it sound like this should be so apparent, but to me it is not. Can you help?

Drew said...

bored in vernal-

The sequence of events presented in the temple and the scriptures are the same. The quote from Elder McConkie is his explanation as to how long the creation took. He is analyzing what the word "day" as presented in the scriptures.

"There is no revealed recitation specifying that each of the “six days” involved in the Creation was of the same duration. Our three accounts of the Creation are the Mosaic, the Abrahamic, and the one presented in the temples. Each of these stems back to the Prophet Joseph Smith. The Mosaic and Abrahamic accounts place the creative events on the same successive days. We shall follow these scriptural recitations in our analysis. The temple account, for reasons that are apparent to those familiar with its teachings, has a different division of events. It seems clear that the “six days” are one continuing period and that there is no one place where the dividing lines between the successive events must of necessity be placed."

I believe he is saying that the creation as presented in the temple presents the events in one continious period, and without time restraints. In addition to this, none of the Creation accounts say that each day, or period of time was the same length. Therefore figuring out the length of the Creation may not be accomplished through a simple formula (x=length of day; time of creation=7x).

I hope that makes sense.

Drew said...

By the way, the idea that each day may have been a different length of time makes the biblical Creation even more compatible with the theory of evolution.