He who gives an answer before he hears,
It is folly and shame to him. (Prov. 18:13)
Espousing a
Secular View of Life
For centuries the Western World had a universal belief that God was active in
His creation and concerned about the affairs of men. Many believed His will for
mankind was contained in the Scriptures. Then came the Renaissance. Bruce L. Shelley defines this
movement: “The word [Renaissance] means ‘rebirth’ and refers to the recovery of
the values of classical Greek and Roman civilization expressed in literature,
politics and the arts.”[i] Since the
beliefs of these early writers were based upon man’s philosophies rather than upon
God’s revelation, people began to look to their own powers of thought rather
than to God’s revelation. This movement received its momentum
through the founding of universities in Germany. Twelve were established in the ninety-seven years between 1409 and 1506. Renaissance thought began in the University of Paris and spread to the German universities.
through the founding of universities in Germany. Twelve were established in the ninety-seven years between 1409 and 1506. Renaissance thought began in the University of Paris and spread to the German universities.
A new
concept of the universe, spurred on by the discoveries made by men engaged in
mathematics and science, began to emerge alongside the philosophies of the
Renaissance. We know these men today by their discoveries: Nicolaus
Copernicus (1473-1543) that
the sun rather than the earth, is the center of the solar system; Johann Kepler (1471-1630),
that the sun holds the planets in their paths; and Galileo Galilei (1564-1642),
that the acceleration of falling bodies is the same for all types of objects at
the surface of the earth. But it was Isaac Newton (1642-1727) who
took all the discoveries and presented them in his unified law of gravitation,
which he set forth in his Mathematical
Principles of Natural Philosophy in 1687.
From these scientific discoveries a new concept emerged; according to it, our
environment is controlled by natural laws rather than by an involved Creator
God. Many people began to feel that God was far away and uninvolved with life
on earth. If our lives are to experience understanding and fulfillment, they
thought, we must discover them through our own reason.
People
ceased to view their environment as though it were under the immediate
volitional control of the hand of God; they began, instead, to see the universe
as though it were solely under the control of natural laws. They believed that
if they could find and grasp these laws, they could control their own destiny. Shelley describes the
spirit of the Age of Reason in the
following words: “The spirit of the Age of Reason was nothing less than an
intellectual revolution, a whole new way of looking at God, the world, and oneself.
It was the birth of secularism.”[ii] The new
perspectives of the Age of Reason were not left to themselves to multiply, but
rather were propagated through the writings of those who are called the philosophes. This movement began in
Paris. Rather than completely denying a “Supreme Being,” they ridiculed anyone
who believed this Deity had revealed Himself through the Bible or through
miracles. The most influential propagandist for deism was Voltaire (1694-1778),
who personified the skepticism of the French Enlightenment.
Sir Charles
Lyell’s influential work Principles of Geology published in 1830, was written to prove that the
earth’s surface is the result of the effect of natural causes operating over a
vast period of time. Into such a secular mindset, in 1859 Charles Darwin published his Origin of the Species. Charles Darwin presented his
thesis as standing totally upon natural laws without any regard for the Creator
God. Darwin had a problem
with reconciling the evil he saw in the
world with the popular concept of the Christian God. Since Darwin attempted to
explain life based totally upon natural law, many concluded that the world
could be explained without reference to a Creator God.
The new science
gave evidence that the earth was much older than 6,000 years. In this
philosophical frame of mind, it became fashionable to deny the inspiration of
the Bible. Those who came to this conclusion either held to forms of
Christianity that deny the inspiration of the Book upon which their belief is
based, or they rejected Christianity including its sacred Book. Even though the Bible was under attack, some held
to a strong faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and to the divine origin of the
Bible.
This book presents a scenario that
will harmonize the teachings of the Bible and the truth as discovered by
science, thus freeing our minds from contradictions. The secular view of life
began before the time of Darwin, before the time of Charles Lyell, and even before the aggressive
foe of Christianity Voltaire; this new view of life began with
the Renaissance when some intellectuals
substituted human philosophies for Divine Revelation.
An example of those who began to espouse this new philosophy was
Nicholas of Cues (1401-1464), a churchman, whose view has been summarized by Walker:
“[He] saw God as the infinite unity of all contrasts of the universe and he
conceived of the universe as an infinite process…His philosophical universalism
led him to inquire for the unity of faith in the diversity of religions…”[iii] Please notice that Nicholas of Cues combined divinely
revealed truth and opposing error into one; he departed from God’s revelation
and took up human philosophies. Such was the basis for self-deception
and error. As long as a person believes that he can find the ultimate truth
apart from believing in the divine revelation, the Bible, and the divine Revealer,
the Lord Jesus Christ, he will never know the Truth. Only Jesus could say, “I
am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but
through Me” (John 14:6). Knowledge of God, of truth, and of forgiveness of sins
through the Lord Jesus Christ was revealed by God to man in the Bible. It is
the Bible that contains the truth concerning God’s person, His ways, and His
will.
Many people today, young and old,
feel that if they accept what they believe has been established by science,
they cannot also accept the Bible as God’s Word without creating in their minds
a logical contradiction. But if we cannot accept the revelation of God, how can
we come to the knowledge of the
Truth? This book is an attempt to show
that God’s revelation through the Bible stands. No conflict exists between the
Bible and true science. We can then embrace the Scripture and the One who gave
it.
A Word about the View of Divine Accommodation
After I published my first edition,
I received comments from some that it is not necessary to harmonize the Bible
and science because God’s revelation of Himself and His will is given in the
context of whatever worldview is accepted at that time; if their world of the
cosmos is incorrect, they say, this erroneous cosmology will be taught
in the Scriptures along with the truth of God’s revelation. Those of this view
would say that Genesis 1 presents a concept of the cosmos that believes the
earth is covered with a large metal dome, above which a large amount of water
is stored. Windows in this dome release water to the clouds that pour it down
upon the earth. They believe that the author of Genesis 1 weaved this popular
cosmology with God’s revelation of Himself into the Genesis 1 creation story.
The result was a false presentation of the structure of the earth and heavens,
but a true revelation of God. I shall explain why I think a correct understanding
of Genesis 1 reveals that the author of Genesis is not teaching this common
view of the cosmos, but rather narrates our present view of the atmosphere and
clouds. My defense of this view is presented in appendix N.
Alleged Conflicts between Science and the Bible
Jesus Christ believed in the impeccable
truthfulness of God’s Word. It is easy to see that a discrepancy between what
the Bible teaches and what science believes can be troubling to the serious
Christian; it could become a stumbling block for someone searching for
spiritual truth. This is why it is important to discover the truth concerning
our origins.
Science teaches that the world was created 4.6 billion years
ago. The Bible teaches that Adam and Eve were created on the sixth day of
creation. If the creation days were twenty-four-hour solar days, and if the
first parents of the human race were Adam and Eve, God would have created mankind
essentially at the time He created the world. The Bible gives us the account of
the creation of Adam and Eve and then lists genealogies that bring us from
about 6,000 years ago down to historic times. Even if we were to assume that
there were enough gaps in the genealogies that the creation of Adam and Eve
could be placed at 10,000 years ago, this would still be insignificant in comparison
to the scientists’ 4.6 billion years.
Science tells us that modern man originated in Africa through a
process of naturalistic evolution from an archaic species and that mankind has
essentially remained unchanged for 100,000 to 200,000 years. The biblical
scenario sounds much different. Since the biblical genealogies give us the patriarchs’
ages at the birth of their sons (assuming there are no gaps in the genealogies),
we can calculate the birth dates of each patriarch back to Adam. When we do
this, beginning with the birth of Jacob at approximately 2005 BC, we find that
Adam and Eve were created about 4200 BC (according to a new chronology to be
discussed 5200 BC). Furthermore, the Bible teaches that God created Adam out of
the dust of the ground and Eve from Adam’s rib. According to Genesis, this
couple began their lives in the Garden Eden Iraq Africa ,
as science has concluded. Considering the new discoveries of science and making
a careful study of the Holy Bible, we shall attempt to discover what actually happened.
It appears to me that the Bible contains evidence that mankind actually has two
origins; this approach will lead us to a satisfying harmony of science and the
Bible.
My Approach
The questions concern (1) the age of
the universe including the earth, (2) the age of man and his place of origin,
and (3) the origin of man. Did God create man directly from the dust or did man
descend from previous hominids or both?
First,
my approach to solving the apparent contradiction in regard to the age of the
earth is fairly common in Christian circles. According to the Scriptures, man was
created near the end of the sixth day. Therefore, if the days of creation were
quite long, the beginning of the creation of the universe could have been
extremely long ago. We shall examine the Hebrew text which indicates that the days
of creation should be understood as long days.
Second, we must address the discrepancy between the age of
mankind upon the earth from science and the age of mankind upon the earth calculated
from biblical genealogies of Adam’s descendants. My approach reveals evidence
from the Bible that both these teachings may be correct. From a study of the life spans given in the
genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 and from a thorough study of the Scriptures, I
have found biblical evidence that people inhabited the earth before the
creation of Adam and Eve. We shall
analyze each patriarch’s life span to show that the decrease in longevity was
the direct result of intermarriages between pre-Adamic people and Adam’s
descendants. This analysis will show that the first chapter of Genesis narrates
God’s creation of a pre-Adamic race, whose time of creation dates long before
the creation of Adam and Eve.
Third, my interpretation of the
Bible indicates that a race of humans existed before Adam and Eve. In 1655, Frenchman Isaac de La Peyrere (Peyrerius) (1594-1676), wrote a book, now
translated into English, entitled A
Theological Systeme Upon The Presupposition, That Men Were Before Adam,
which conveyed the view that men lived before Adam and Eve. Approximately 350
years ago, 1656, he published another book with the English title Men Before Adam: Or, a Discourse upon the
Twelfth, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Verses of the Fifth Chapter of the Epistle
of the Apostle Paul to the Romans, by Which Are Prov’d That the First Men Were
Created before Adam. Others have also held this view, but it was never
widely accepted. Robert Jamieson, whose negative critique of this view we discuss in appendix
A, made a wise comment in A Commentary
Critical, Experimental, and Practical on the Old and New Testaments. He
wrote, “Therefore, until some stronger evidence shall be adduced than what the
world has yet seen, to prove that mankind is not all descended from one pair,
the theory…must be rejected.”[iv]
We shall present new evidence for a dual origin of man. We shall also show that
the Bible supports an old-earth view that the teaching of the Bible better
harmonizes with the view that mankind has existed for much longer than 6000
years. We shall take a fresh look at the Scriptures to see if they give us an
indication of how God went about to create the pre-Adamic race.
The dual-origin thesis I am about to set forth at first
may seem to many readers to be impossible and unthinkable, but I have compiled
biblical and scientific data to support it.
Here is my thesis:
Some time before the
creation of Adam and Eve, God created the human race through a divinely created
process of descent from “the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 2:4). Six thousand years
ago God created Adam and Eve by forming Adam supernaturally from the dust of
the ground and by forming Eve from Adam’s rib in a short period of time. In
time Adam and Eve’s descendants began to marry into the pre-Adamic races. This
mixing of the races began a process of diluting the Adamic gene pool until
Adam’s descendants not only lost their longevity, but their gene pool was
greatly diluted as a result of this mixing so that today the human race has
become quite genetically homogeneous.
In chart 1, I have shown my view of the relative order of some of the
major historical occurrences of the past. It shows that the universe began to
form first by a creative act of God. After the earth was created, God prepared it
for the animals and mankind. God created the pre-Adamic race during the six days
of creation, but He created Adam and Eve supernaturally directly from the
ground after the six days of creation
had passed. Intermarriage between the descendants of Adam and the descendants
of the pre-Adamites began before Noah’s flood. If any of Adam and Eve’s
descendants, besides Noah and his family,
were living at the time of the flood, they were destroyed in the flood. Noah
and his family were saved through the flood and blessed with many descendants,
who populated the broad stretches of land around the eastern Mediterranean. Eventually,
the Lord Jesus Christ, the promised Messiah, was born into a line of
descendants who were a mixture of Noah’s descendants and descendants of the
pre-Adamites. Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary by the power of the Holy
Spirit. Jesus’ human ancestry goes back to Adam and Eve and also to the first
pre-Adamites.
Geneticists tell us there has been
much intermarrying between groups of people. This means that just about every
person living today can trace his ancestry back to Adam and Eve as well as back
to the pure pre-Adamic race. Steve Olson, a veteran science journalist, wrote,
“One need go back only a couple of millennia to connect everyone alive today to
a common pool of ancestors.”[v] He
goes on to add, “Being descended from someone doesn’t necessarily mean that you
have any DNA from that
person…The amount of DNA each of us gets from any one of our 1,024 ancestors
ten generations back is minuscule—and we might not get any DNA from that person,
given the way the chromosomes rearrange
themselves every generation.”[vi]
That the Bible teaches God created a pre-Adamic race will appear as a difficult
concept to accept for many readers; that the Bible teaches this race
CHART 1: THE RELATIVE ORDER OF EVENTS RELEVANT
TO THE THESIS
1. Creation of the universe
2. Creation of the earth
3. Creation of pre-Adamites
4. End of six days of creation
5. Creation of Adam and Eve
6. Adam’s descendants intermarry
with the pre-Adamites.
7. Noah marries into a mixed race.
8. God sends Noah’s flood and
destroys the mixed race.
9. Noah’s descendants try to
hold their longevity at Babel.
10.
God confounds their languages at Babel and they are scattered into the earth.
11.
Mary conceives Jesus by the Holy Spirit.
12.
The Lord Jesus is resurrected; after forty days He ascends into Heaven.
At this point many readers will
probably wonder how this thesis can be harmonized with certain verses in the
New Testament that seem to declare Adam to be the first man. Subsequent pages
explain why none of these passages teaches that Adam was the first man of the
whole human race. It is my belief that this thesis does not contradict any biblical teaching.
The
Purposes of This Book
The main purpose of this book is to harmonize science and the Bible so that
(1) unbelievers can know that the Bible is truly God’s infallible revelation,
which is “able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith
which is in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:15); (2) those who have believed can feel
secure in their faith in Christ; (3) Christians, who have not been convinced
that the Bible was given by the inspiration of God, will realize the validity
of this doctrine; and (4) Christians may be assisted in their efforts as they
defend the Christian faith.
This
thesis confirms the truthfulness of the Bible right where it is under its
heaviest criticism. The Bible is criticized for contradicting science in
regard to the age of the earth and the length of time mankind has inhabited it;
it is criticized for contradicting science with regard to the alleged teaching
that all of mankind has descended from a couple who were created directly from
the hand of God; and it is criticized for specifying over 900-year life spans
for the early patriarchs. The next few chapters present mathematical evidence
for these long life spans and for a dual-origin thesis.
Alternate Dating of Old Testament Events
Since the first edition of this
book, a new biblical chronology has come to my attention that bears upon the
dates as given in this book. The new chronology adds on a thousand years to all
the biblical dates that specify events before the period of the judges. This means,
of course, that the new chronology sees all the events of the Bible before the
judges as having occurred 1,000 years earlier than the traditionally accepted
dates. Gerald E. Aardsma has been advancing this new
chronology on his website http://www.biblicalchronologist.org, where a number
of his articles and books are available for purchase. He defends the new
chronology by showing that it fits the biblical record better and that archaeological
data supports it. He acknowledges that in order for one to espouse this new
chronology, he must admit to a scribal error in the date given in 1 Kings 6:1. I
have added the new chronological dates some places along with the traditional
dates in this new edition. These alternate dates will be preceded by NC. We shall discuss this new chronology
further in chapter 12, noting how it impacts ones view of Noah’s flood.
[i] Bruce
L. Shelley, Church History in Plain
Language, 2nd ed. (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1995), 312.
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Williston Walker, A
History of the Christian Church (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1959),
291-292.
[iv]
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset, and David Brown, A Commentary Critical, Experimental, and Practical on the Old and New
Testaments, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company,
1946, reprinted 1990), vol. 1, part 1:88.
[v]
Steve Olson, Mapping Human History:
Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins (Boston & New York: Houghton
Mifflin, c. 2002, first Mariner Books ed. 2003), 47.
[vi]
Ibid.
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