INTRODUCTION
The creation of the life on the earth is described in Genesis chapter 1, and we learn that the different life forms were created in a certain order. I will now look at the different stages described and compare them with our knowledge of the geological history of the earth and its life forms.
The creation occurred during six yāmīm (singular, yom), and it is important to find the semantic range of the word yom. The basic meaning of the word is “day,” but the length of each “day” must be determined on the basis of the context. For example, in Genesis 1:5, the part of a day of 24 hours that has daylight is called yom, but in the same verse both daylight and darkness are included in the first yom. Moreover, in Genesis 2:4 it is said that the creation on all the six days occurred on “that yom” (singular), which shows that the whole period of the six days is called “one day.”
Throughout the Hebrew Bible, the word yom refers to time periods of different lengths, and all these examples show that there is no linguistic reason to believe that the creation occurred during six periods with each being 24 hours long. We should also note that heaven and earth (the universe) were created “in the beginning,” before the period of six days began. This means that the creation account does not say anything about the age of the universe.
In the discussion that follows I use the names of the different periods of the geologic column and the years ascribed to these periods in hundreds of millions of years. However, at the end of the article, I show that these great ages are hypothetical and that they may be reduced to thousands rather than millions of years.
WATER AND DARKNESS
1:2: And the earth was formless and desolate, and darkness was over the surface of the deep; and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.[1]
As mentioned, the earth was created “in the beginning” (1:1), and its creation is undated. We know nothing about the first period of the earth, but we can compare it with the planet Venus. Its atmosphere is so dense that the sunlight that reaches the surface is only at one-tenth the brightness of a cloudy day on earth. If gases more dense than the atmosphere of Venus enveloped the earth, no light would have reached the earth’s surface. Thus, the physical characteristics of the atmosphere of Venus show that it is not unlikely that the surface of the earth could have been at one time completely dark.
According to the account, the surface of the earth was completely covered with water, as vv. 6–9 indicate. Do we find any evidence in favor of this? The Precambrian period in many places of the earth is practically devoid of living creatures except certain one-celled algae. But in the Salt Range of the Punjab and other places, flowering plants and insects occur in the Precambrian, as we have seen. In the Cambrian period, great numbers of new species appear “suddenly.” It is interesting to note that the three periods on top of Precambrian—the Cambrian, Ordovician, and Silurian Periods—for the most part contain marine fossils.[2] Thus, the sedimentary rocks of these periods were for the most part deposited beneath water, and this corroborates the saying of 1:2 that the surface of the earth was covered with water.
LIGHT ON THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH
1:3: And God said, “Let there be light,” and light came to be.
The sun is included in the word “heaven,” and was created “in the beginning” (1:1), but its rays evidently could not penetrate down to the surface of the earth. On the first day, the situation changed, and the surface of the earth was no longer dark. We do not know what caused this change, but the gases that covered the earth must have become less dense. There are no laws of nature or physical phenomena that would contradict the view that the gases became less dense.
AN ATMOSPHERE
1:6, 8: And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the water causing a separation between water and water.” God called the expanse “heaven.” And evening came and morning came, the second day.
Before this time, gases and matter had enveloped the earth. Now, there became a distinction. The surface of the earth was still covered with water, but an atmosphere was now made, and above this atmosphere there were large amounts of water.
There are problems connected with the view of a water canopy above the atmosphere. For example, the planet Venus is enveloped in a dense atmosphere consisting basically of carbon dioxide and nitrogen. The temperature on the surface is 467º C, and the pressure is about 93 times higher than on the surface of the earth. But higher up, between 50 and 65 km (31 to 37 mi) above the surface of Venus, the pressure and temperature are about the same as on the earth.
The situation on Venus shows that a canopy immediately above the atmosphere could raise both the pressure and temperature on the surface of the earth and prevent the light from the sun of reaching the earth. This could mean that life could not exist. However, we do not know the aggregate condition of this water, whether it was gas, liquid, or ice. And neither do we know the altitude of the water, and whether a thin canopy existed immediately above the atmosphere and more water existed farther away from the surface of the earth.
Moreover, geologists today believe that 66 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period, the earth was hit by a massive comet or by asteroids, with the result that three quarters of all plant and animal species, including the dinosaurs, became extinct. It is not impossible that around 4,400 years ago the earth was hit by a comet or by meteors consisting of ice, which added extra water to the canopy above the atmosphere. The important point is that because we do not know the thickness of the canopy, or the nature and altitude of the water, or whether congealed water from space was added to the canopy, we cannot know what effect the water above the atmosphere would have on the life on the earth before the worldwide flood.[3]
The rings of Saturn consist of ice particles with traces of rocks; they range in size from micrometers to meters. The mechanism of their formation and when they were formed is unknown. But the mere existence of these rings shows that different kinds of matter can exist high above a planet.
Those believing in organic evolution also believe that the first atmosphere was reducing, that is, it did not contain oxygen, because the synthesis of bio-molecules cannot occur in an atmosphere with oxygen. But recent research on minerals believed to be more than 3.5 billion years old indicate that there was an atmosphere at this time that contained oxygen. This indicates that an atmosphere containing oxygen existed at an early phase in the history of the earth.[4]
DRY LAND APPEARS
1:9: And God said, “Let the water under the heaven be gathered to one place, and let dry land become visible.” And it came to be so. God called the dry ground “land,” and the reservoir of water he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.
On the first part of the third day, parts of the crust below the water were thrust upward, and the continents were formed. These events must be said to have been catastrophic, and the question is whether we can see something in the sedimentary rocks that could be traces of these catastrophes. Most of the fossils from the periods Cambrian, Ordovician, and Silurian are marine fossils: snails, octopuses, corals, sea lilies, trilobites, etc.
Around Oslo, Norway, great areas of Cambro-Silurian rocks are exposed, and we can see how enormous forces have changed the positions of the rock layers. White and dark were deposited in a horizontal position, but today they stand in a vertical position. These rocks, where fossils of trilobites and other multi-celled organisms are seen, may be witnesses of the events on the third day. The Cambro-Silurian layers were deposited below water, and these layers with their fossils were thrust up above the water by enormous forces. This may have happened on the third day.
The organisms that were fossilized in the Cambro-Silurian periods are not mentioned in the creation account in the Bible, most likely because they are rather small marine creatures that cannot be called “souls,” and they did not “crawl and swarm in the water,” as did the marine creatures that were created on the fifth day. The word “soul” basically refers to animals that breathe. It is applied to terrestrial animals and to marine animals that breathe, such as the whales. However, it seems that large marine animals that get their oxygen by the help of gills are called “souls” as well. (Genesis 1:21) The fossils in the Cambro-Silurian rocks suggest that these small marine creatures were the first complex multi-celled creatures that were created.
TERRESTRIAL VEGETATION
1:11, 13: Then God said, “Let the earth cause vegetation (dæshæ‘) to sprout: green plants (‘œsæb) yielding seed, and trees (‘ēts) with fruit, yielding fruit with seed in it, after its kind.” And the earth caused vegetation to go out, green plants yielding seed, after its kind, and trees yielding fruit with seed in it, after its kind. And God saw that it was good. And evening came, and morning came, the third day.
My first task is to find the semantic range of the Hebrew words that are translated as “vegetation,” “seed-bearing plants,” and “trees with fruit.” We should keep in mind that Hebrew substantives often have a wider semantic range and include many more objects than corresponding English words.
The verb dāsa‘ has the basic meaning “to sprout,” and the corresponding substantive dæshæ‘ refers to anything that sprouts, to grass and vegetation; the translation “vegetation” is fine. The word ‘ēsæb, which is translated by “green plant,” refers to grass and other green plants. The word ‘ēts can refer to large trees or to smaller plants, such as flax. This plant can be 1.2 meters high and its stalk is slim. Today, we would use the words “plant” or “shrub,” and not “tree,” to describe the flax plant. Nonetheless, the plant is referred to by the word ‘ēts in Joshua 2:6.
The word perī is often translated by the English word “fruit.” In the Bible, it often refers to the fruit of vine-trees and other fruit-trees. But it also refers to the “berries” of the cedar in Ezekiel 17:3. By our modern definition, a fruit arises only from a flower, but the cedar does not have flowers. We would, therefore, today refer to the cedar “berries” as “cones,” but Ezekiel referred to them as “fruit.” The word perī may also have the reference “branch” and “bough.” In Isaiah 11:1 the verb pārā (corresponding to the substantive perī) has “shoot” or “sprout” (nētser) as its object. Literally, the translation may be: “his roots will bear fruit, that is, a sprout.” In Isaiah 37:31 we find the substantive perī used in the same way: “Judah will bring forth root below and shoots (“fruit”) above.” (See also 2 Kings 19:30.) A root does not produce flowers and fruit, but rather, shoots and sprouts.[5] Therefore, the rendering “fruit tree” can be somewhat misleading, because we connect these words with apple and orange trees and not with cedars.
The expression “trees with fruit” is used above, but the Hebrew expression may also include trees that are not yielding fruit. The important point in the discussion above is that the Hebrew words being used have a very wide range of meanings: the first expression refers to green vegetation, the second refers to green vegetation with seeds, and the third refers to vegetation with trunks or stalks that has fruit, sprouts, or boughs.
The period above the Silurian is the Devonian. In the Cambrian period there was “an explosion” of multi-celled life forms, and M.A. Kazlev says: “The Devonian period was, for plants, a sort of Cambrian explosion.”[6] Many plants that were not seen as fossils before, appeared in the Devonian period, and fossils of a few plants were also seen in the last part of the Silurian period. In the Carboniferous period, which followed the Silurian, fossils of tall evergreen trees are found. The Carboniferous period was followed by the Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods, and in the Cretaceous, fossils of flowering plants are found. In the next period, which is the Tertiary, the first fruit trees in the modern sense of the word occurred as fossils.
Any plant is a complex structure, but scholars today say that the plants living at the end of the Silurian and in the Devonian periods were simpler than the fruit trees of the Tertiary period, 400 million years later. However, the evidence from India and several other countries shows that the traditional view of the origin of plants is wrong. An enormous amount of microfossils from the Salt Range in India, and from many other countries, shows that flowering plants and insects existed in the Cambrian period and even in the Precambrian period. Moreover, coal and oil, which are formed by animals or plants, exist in several places in India in Cambrian and Precambrian rocks. Microfossils of plants from the Cambrian and Precambrian are also found in South America, North America, and Europe. This suggests that great numbers of plants existed at that time. Thus, the words of Genesis 1:11 that plants were created before the terrestrial animals and fishes and large marine animals are justified.
LUMINARIES TO GIVE LIGHT ON THE EARTH
1:14, 15, 19: And God said, “Let there be luminaries in the expanse of the heaven to separate the day from the night; and let them serve as signs to mark seasons, days, and years. And let them be luminaries in the expanse of the heaven to give light on the earth.” And it came to be so . . . . And evening came, and morning came, the fourth day.
I have already presented evidence that the earth had an atmosphere containing oxygen before the dry land appeared. Green plants produce a great part of the oxygen in the present atmosphere, and when plants started to inhabit the earth, they would influence the composition of the atmosphere.
On the fourth day, God removed the dust or gaseous elements that prevented the light from the sun and the moon to shine on the earth. The sun and the moon and the stars are included in the word “heaven” in Genesis 1:1, and were created “in the beginning,” before the creation week started. Genesis 2:1 says: “And the heaven and the earth and all their army (tsābā’) were completed.”
Because “heaven” grammatically speaking is dual, the pronominal suffix attached to tsābā’ is plural. This does not show that two or several heavens are referred to, but the plural suffix is used in order to comply with the grammar. However, the plurality of the suffix shows without any doubt that the text speaks of the “army” of the heaven, and not any “army” of the earth.
The word sābā’ can refer to a literal army, but in connection with “heaven” it refers to the heavenly bodies. This is shown in Deuteromy 4:19: “And if you raise your eyes toward the heaven (shāmayim), and you see the sun, the moon, and the stars, the whole army (sābā’) of the heaven.” In this verse “the army of the heaven” stands in apposition to “the sun, the moon, and the stars.” This shows that sābā’ in Genesis 2:1 refers to the sun, the moon, and the stars, because 2:1 speaks of “the heaven and the earth,” the same words that are used in 1:1. So the word “army” in 2:1 must be a specification of “heaven” in 1:1.
Thus, the conclusion is that “heaven” in 1:1 includes the sun, the moon, and the stars. That the sun is included is confirmed by 1:3–5 where the light of the sun is implied to distinguish between day and night.
On the fourth day, the sun, the moon, and the stars became visible on the earth, and there was a clear distinction between day and night and between the four seasons of the year. We note that the luminaries are not said to have been “created” (bārā) on the fourth day, but they were “made” (‘āsā), and God “put/gave” (nātan) them in the expanse, which means that they would become useful for the creatures on the earth.[7]
We do not know today exactly how the elements that clouded the atmosphere before the fourth day were removed. But if they fell down on the earth, that could imply catastrophes that could have caused sediments with plant fossils. In any case, there is nothing in the account in 1:14–19 that would contradict any law of nature or any scientific datum that we have.
SEA CREATURES AND FLYING CREATURES
1:20, 21, 23: And God said, “Let the water swarm with living souls that move, and let flying creatures fly above the earth across the expanse of the heaven.” And God created the great creatures of the sea and all the living souls that crawl and swarm in the water, and every winged flying creature after its kind. And God saw that it was good. . . . And evening came, and morning came, the fifth day.
The term “living creatures” used in some Bible translations is literally “living souls.” The small and large creatures in the oceans and lakes were created. As already mentioned, this did not include trilobites and other small marine creatures from the Cambrian period, which do not crawl and swarm in the water and which are not “souls.” These small marine creatures were evidently created before the third day. The oldest fish are from the Cambrian period:
Phosphatic dermal fragments of Anatolepsis, interpreted as a heterostracan fish (class Agnatha), have been discovered in the Deadwood Formation of Late Cambrian age in northeastern Wyoming. This discovery extends back the age of the earliest known vertebrate fossils by approximately 40 million years. Other occurrences of Anatolepsis in North America, Greenland, and Spitsbergen show that these fish had a widespread geographic distribution in Late Cambrian and Early Ordovician marine environments. [8]
Whether the mentioned fish should be termed “soul” or not is uncertain. Fossils of the first jawed fishes, including sharks, are found in the Devonian period (419–372 million years ago). Fossils of the first amphibians are also found in this period. The word “bird” in some Bible translations is translated from the Hebrew words ‘ōp kānāp which literally means “winged flying creatures,” and they refer to any flying creature, including flying reptiles and insects; the word ‘ōp is applied to insects in Leviticus 11:20, 21. The first fossils of insects are found in the Pennsylvanian period, supposed to be 315 million years ago. The first fossils of flying reptiles are found in the late Triassic period, supposed to be 240 million years ago, and the first fossils of birds are found in the Jurassic period, supposed to be 200 million years ago. But fossils of insects are also found in the Cambrian and Precambrian periods in the Salt Range of the Punjab. However, these insects are very small and need not necessarily be subsumed under the word ‘ōp. It is obvious that insects of some kinds would exist together with plant life.
The creatures in the seas are mentioned before the winged flying creatures, so is this a chronological statement? Most likely it shows that creatures in the seas were created before flying creatures. But the order may also be thematic and therefore not chronological. Each creation day lasted for a long unspecified time, and this indicates that not all creatures in the sea and in the air were created at the same time—they were created during the fifth day.
However, if we consider the verb in 1:21, we also see an additional possibility. The verb is imperfective (imperfect consecutive), and such a verb form has in many instances an ingressive meaning, that is, the first part of an action is made visible for the reader. An example of this is 1 Kings 6:1: “In the four hundred and eightieth year after the sons of Israel came out of Egypt. . . . Solomon began to build (imperfect consecutive) the house of Jehova.” It took many years to build the temple, so this was only the start.
If the same perspective is used in Genesis 1:21, that Jehova “began to create” on the fifth day, the creation of creatures in the sea and in the air could continue into the sixth day. This would mean that some creatures in the sea and in the air were created and could have become fossils before any terrestrial animals were created and could become fossils, but that other creatures in the sea and in the air could have been created at the same time as some terrestrial animals were created.
TERRESTRIAL CREATURES
1:24: And God said, “Let the earth cause living souls to come forth after their kinds: animals (behēmā), creeping creatures (ræmæs), and beasts (hayya) of the earth, after their kinds.” And it came to be so.
Regarding terrestrial life, the expression “living souls” is again used, and the three words referring to these living souls again have a wider semantic range than the corresponding English words. The word behēmā which is translated as “animal,” can refer to animals in general, to beast,, and to domestic animals.
The word ræmæs refers to any animal that is creeping, and hayya, which is translated as “beast,” can refer to all kinds of animals, including wild ones. Because the words have many references, I give them a general rendering, and it is not possible to know all the different kinds of animals that belong to each of the three groups.
Fossils of the first reptiles are found in the Carboniferous period (358–303 million years ago). Dinosaurs and other large reptiles from the Jurassic period (201–152 million years ago) must be classified as wild animals and not as creeping things. Fossils of horses and other large terrestrial animals are found in the upper part of the Tertiary period (30 million years ago).
HUMAN BEINGS
1:26, 27: And God said, “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the flying creatures of the heaven, over all the animals, and over all the earth and every creeping animal that is moving on the earth.” And God created man in his image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
Human beings are known from the Holocene, which is the upper period of the Quaternary. Thus, humans were the last creatures created by God to appear on the earth.
[1]. This verse and the following verses from Genesis are translated by me. In the first 28 verses of Genesis chapter 1, there are 44 examples of the verb form called waw consecutive or imperfect consecutive. These forms express actions that are continuing. In English, there is no form that exactly matches the nuances of imperfect consecutive exactly, and therefore I have rendered the forms with simple past, instead of using different means to try to make the continuing actions visible in the English text. This means that I use the rendering “God said” instead of “God proceeded to say” or “God was saying,” which are more correct. For a discussion of the continuing actions of these forms, see Furuli, A New Understanding of the Verbal System of Classical Hebrew: An Attempt to Distinguish Between Semantic and Pragmatic Factors, chapter 6.
[2]. Sometimes fossils are placed in a particular period of the geologic column where they do not belong; therefore, we should always scrutinize the criteria used to place certain fossils in a particular period.
[3]. That the air pressure before the worldwide Flood was higher than today is suggested by the size of fossil insects. Insects do not have lungs, but they get their oxygen through tubes in their body. Because of this, the size of insects today is restricted. In the fossil record there are insects that are many times larger than similar insects today, and that could suggest a higher air pressure.
[4]. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, “Setting the Stage for Life: Scientists Make Key Discovery About the Atmosphere of Early Earth.” (http://news.rpi.edu/luwakkey/2953); Trail et al., “The oxidation state of Hadean magmas and implications for early Earth’s atmosphere.” (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v480/n7375/full/nature10655.html); Rosing, “13C-Depleted Carbon Microparticles in >3700-Ma Sea-Floor Sedimentary Rocks from West Greenland.” (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/283/5402/674.abstract)
[5]. See Ginsberg, “‘Roots Below and Fruit Above’ and Related Matters,” 72–76.
[6]. http://palaeos.com/paleozoic/devonian/devonian2.htm.
[7]. The word bārā occurs 48 times in the Hebrew Bible, and it refers to God’s actions of creating something that did not exist before. The word ‘āsā has a wider meaning; it can include the act of creating something that did not exist before, such as different animals (Genesis 1:25), and it can refer to many kinds of actions, including actions on objects that already exist. When bārā is not used in 1:16, the creation of something that did not exist before is not stressed. When ‘āsā is used instead, the context—God took something (the luminaries), which were created in the beginning (1:1), and put them in the expanse—shows that the part of the semantic field of ‘āsā that the writer wants to make visible is not creation but actions on something that has already been created.
[8]. Repetski, “A Fish from the Upper Cambrian of North America,” 529. (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6002036_A_Fish_from_the_Upper_Cambrian_of_North_America).
A COMPARISON BETWEEN GENESIS CHAPTER 1 AND THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
It is clear that the skeleton of the geologic column does exist. For example, on the basis of superposition we can say that dinosaurs are found in rocks that are younger than trilobites, and vestiges of man are found in sediments that are younger than the sediments where dinosaurs are found.
I will now compare Genesis 1 and the geologic column. In the table below, column I lists the days of creation; column II lists someof what was created on each day; column III lists the periods of the geologic column; and column IV lists some plants and animals that occurred in each particular geologic period. Living creatures were not mentioned on the first and second days, so these two days are not listed. On the fourth day the atmosphere was made clearer, but because living creatures were not mentioned, this day is not listed.
On the third day, plants were created. The first time, land plants are listed in textbooks and lexicons is in the Devonian period. But plants and insects are found in the Cambrian and Precambrian periods in India and Pakistan and other countries. On the fifth day, fish, sea animals, and flying creatures were created. Fish in great numbers are first found in the Devonian period, even though one kind of fish is found in the Cambrian period.
The beginning of the fifth day is placed in the Devonian period. Marine amphibians are found in the Triassic, crocodiles in the Jurassic, and whales are first found in the Tertiary period. The first insects are listed in textbooks in the Devonian period, but insects are found as far back as the Cambrian and Precambrian periods in India.
Giant insects are found in the Carboniferous, flying reptiles are found in the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous, and the first birds are found in the Cretaceous period. On the sixth day, terrestrial animals and creeping animals were created. Small amphibians, which perhaps may be counted as marine animals, are listed in the Carboniferous period, but the first reptiles are listed in the Permian period where the beginning of the sixth day is placed.
Reptiles are found in the Triassic period, and the large reptiles like Tyrannosaurus Rex are found in the Jurassic period. The first mammals are found in the Cretaceous period, and mammals that we are familiar with occur for the first time in the Tertiary period. After the creation of the terrestrial animals on the sixth day, man was created. Vestiges of man are found in the Holocene period on top of the geologic column.
When we study the sedimentary rocks we see that the order of the creation of plants and animals during the creation week is confirmed by the fossils in the rocks. I will now look at some details. Biologists put living things into various biological slots, and I use the Gray wolf as an example. Species: Gray wolf, Genus: Canus, Family: Canidae, Order: Carnivora, Class: Mammalia, Phylum: Chordata, Kingdom: Animalia, Domain: Eukarya, and Life.
The classification “kingdom” is close to the presentation of life forms found in Genesis, chapter 1. There we find the “kingdoms”: plants, marine creatures (marine souls), flying creatures, terrestrial creatures (terrestrial souls), and man. If we assume that the geologic column from the Cambrian to Tertiary represents the six days of creation, the Genesis order of plants, sea creatures, flying creatures, creeping creatures, and terrestrial creatures, with man at the top, is confirmed in the sedimentary rocks, as we see in table 1.1.
The only exception is that insects are found in the Cambrian and Precambrian periods, which are viewed as the third day, whereas flying creatures are first created on the fifth day. However, the insects of the Cambrian and Precambrian periods may perhaps have been too small to be counted as flying creatures, just as trilobites and other life forms in the sea are not mentioned in Genesis 1.
Table 1.1 A comparison between Genesis 1 and the geologic column.
| I | II | III | IV |
| Day | Genesis 1 | Geologic Column |
Rocks |
| 3 | Plants | Cambrian | Terrestrial plants, insects, fish |
| Ordovician | |||
| Silurian | Terrestrial plants | ||
| 5 | Fish and sea animals, flying creatures | Devonian | Bony fish, sharks, insects |
| Carboniferous[1] | Sharks, small amphibians, giant insects | ||
| 6 | Terrestrial animals, creeping animals | Permian | Fish, amphibians, reptiles |
| Triassic | Fish, marine amphibians, reptiles, flying reptiles | ||
| Jurassic | Crocodiles, large reptiles, flying reptiles | ||
| Cretaceous | Large reptiles, flying reptiles, birds, mammals | ||
| Tertiary | Whales, mammals, birds | ||
| 6 | Man | Holocene |
Table 1.1 connects the different periods of the geologic column with different creation days on the basis of the classification of “kingdoms.” This does not mean an acceptance of the geologic column itself, and that all rocks ascribed to one period have about the same age.
In my book Can We Trust the Bible? With Focus on the Creation Account, the Worldwide Flood, and the Prophecies I argue that unconsolidated sediments on the top of rocks from different periods are remnants of the Flood. I also argue that tillites, which are consolidated sediments, occurring on the top of different periods, probably are remnants of the Flood as well. These tillites occur in several geologic periods, such as the Precambrian, Cambrian, Devonian, Permian, and Cretaceous. If this is correct, it means that parts of each geologic period are younger than other parts of the period and of the period above.
For example, parts of the Precambrian are younger than parts of the Cambrian. But other parts of the Precambrian, such as the Appila Tillite in an area near Adelaide in Australia may represent remnants of the worldwide Flood, and is 700 million years younger than other parts of the Precambrian (when we use the geologic time scale). This is similar to the other geologic periods, so only the skeleton of the geologic column can be seen.
The conclusion of the discussion about the creation account in the Bible is that this account in no way contradicts the scientific knowledge that we have today. On the contrary, the order of fossils in the rocks corroborates the order of the creation of the different life forms found in Genesis chapter 1. This is in stark contrast to the Babylonian accounts of creation.
[1]. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1035328/Scientists-discover-worlds-bird-lived-235million-years-ago.html.
CAN WE KNOW THE REAL AGES OF THE SEDIMENTARY ROCKS?
The geologic column and the ages of its different periods were not created on the basis of radioactive measurements. But it was made on the basis of the theory that the living creatures on the earth had evolved over hundreds of millions of years, and on the theory that processes in the past occurred in the same way and with the same speed as we see at present (uniformitariansm).
If one or both theories turn out to be wrong, the time estimates of hundreds of millions of years fall apart. We should note that still fossils in the sedimentary rocks cannot be directly dated by radioactive methods, except fossils less that 100,000 years old. And the 14C method that is used for this dating is unreliable. So, still, the ages of the periods of the geologic column are not based on radiactive measurments but on the theories of evolution and uniformitarianism.
Can we get any clues from the account of Genesis regarding the age of the sedimentary rocks of the earth? The creation of the earth and the universe occurred “in the beginning,” so that event is undated; therefore, the earth may or may not be 4.5 billion years old. And similarly with the six creation days, which can include short or long periods of time. I see no empirical or theoretical reasons that would exclude the possibility of the creation days being millions of years in length. But neither do I see any empirical or theoretical reasons that would exclude the possibility that the creation days are only thousands of years in length.
One line of reasoning that could suggest that the creation days were thousands of years rather than millions is as follows: The Quaternary period (Pleistocene and Holocene epochs) is believed to have lasted 2,588 million of years, and more than thirty ice ages with interglacial periods in between are supposed to have occurred.[1] However, there is no real evidence for more than one Ice Age following the Flood that occurred nearly 4,400 years ago. Moreover, there is strong evidence that high mountains were formed after the Flood, when the ocean floors subsided because of the weight of the water that came down. This means that the Quaternary period is reduced to a few thousand years, which is 500 times less than 2,588 million years.
If we say that the start of the Cambrian was 570 million years ago, and we divide this number with 500, the result is 1,140 million years. I do not say that the sedimentary rocks are a little more than 1 million years old, because we do not know. But if uniformitarianism and evolution, which require hundreds of millions of years for the sedimentary rocks, are discarded, the age of these rocks can even be tens of thousands of years rather than 1 million years. Thus, the age of the sedimentary rocks is an open question.
We may also consider the issue of measurable 14C in coal and oil and other objects believed to be millions of years old. Objects that are older than 100,000 years cannot be measured by the carbon-14 method, yet Kitagawa et al. found measurable 14C in bituminous coal from the Yubari coal mine in Japan.[2] The coal is dated to the Miocene epoch, which means that it is between 5 and 23 million years old, but the 14C contents indicated that the coal is only 55,000 years old. Nelson et al. found ages between 30,000 and 50,000 years in several samples of anthracite.[3] Also, 14C has been found in several other coal mines, and the usual explanation for the existence of 14C in coal is 14C contamination, that is, 14C was added a long time after the formation of the coal, or that during processing and measuring the coal in the laboratory, some 14C was added. Gurfinkel et al. say:
Samples of geologic material, millions of years old, or samples derived therefrom, were tested because these would presumably contain only dead carbon. Results showed, however, that 14C contamination could be detected in several samples, complicating the contamination assessment.[4]
It is, of course, possible that the 14C quantities in the coal samples mentioned are not original. But the problem is that there is no way to prove that, and the main reason why contamination is claimed is based on geologic theory—the geologic column school of thought requires that the coal samples be millions of years, not thousands of years old. However, taken at face value, the coal samples are only some thousands of years old.
Some creationists believe that the earth is only a few thousand years old. In order to find evidence for that, scholars with creationist beliefs analyzed one hundred samples believed to be millions of years old, but where 14C was measurable.[5] These samples included marble, shells, foraminifera, calcite, wood, graphite, anthracite, petroleum, natural gas, and diamonds.
Bertsche criticized the work of the mentioned creationist scholars, and he argued particularly in favor of contamination.[6] But in my view, he did not present any data that definitely showed that the 14C ages were based on contamination. If the 14C ages are original, they do not prove that the earth is less than 100,000 years old, but they would indicate that some sedimentary rocks have ages of thousands rather than millions of years.
Polystrate trees also show that layers of rock around them, which, according to uniformitarian theories would have accumulated during 100,000 years or more, were deposited in less than 100 years, as was shown by Ager. Each of the 27 forests of petrified trees on top of each other in the 600 m (2,000 ft) high rock at Yellowstone National Park must have been covered quickly by volcano eruptions or other catastrophes. When one forest was covered, a new forest grew on its top, and then a catastrophe covered this forest, and so on. This means that these rocks with a magnitude of 600 m could have accumulated in a few thousand years.[7] And this may also have been the case with other rocks of a similar thickness where polystrate trees are not found.
Another line of reasoning in the same direction is as follows: The purpose of the Creator was to make the earth habitable for human beings; the earth was created for the benefit of his human sons and daughters. It would therefore be strange if human beings had existed on the earth 0.00001% of the time that animals, over which they should rule, had existed (6,000 years compared with 570,000,000 years). To make the earth a good place for human beings would require the right kind of atmosphere and the right kind of environments. On the basis of the work of the laws of nature, this could take some thousands of years, but it would hardly require hundreds of millions of years. Therefore, it is more likely that the age of the sedimentary rocks should be counted in thousands rather than in millions of years.
| The ages of the rocks of the geologic column of 600 million years are based on the theories of organic evolution and uniformitarism. If these theories are wrong, the high age estimates are wrong as well. There is much evidence indicating that the ages of the sedimentary rocks are thousands of years rather than hundreds of millions of years. |
[1]. The book by Ramberg et al., Landet Blir til: Norges geologi [The Country Is Formed: The Geology of Norway], 498, speaks of 40 ice ages.
[2]. Kitagawa et al., “A batch preparation method for graphite targets with low background for AMS 14C measurements,” 297.
[3]. Nelson et al., “Accelerator Radiocarbon Dating at SFU,” 218.
[4]. Gurfinkel, “An assessment of laboratory contamination at the Isotrace Radiocarbon Facility,” 335.
[5]. Baumgardner, et al., “Measurable 14C in Fossilized Organic Materials: Confirming the Young Earth Creation-Flood Model”; Taylor and Southon, “Use of Natural Diamonds to Monitor 14C AMS Instrument Backgrounds,” 282, 284.
[6]. Bertsche, “RATE’s Radiocarbon: Intrinsic or Contamination?”
[7]. Corroborating the possibility of a young age of the rocks at Yellowstone National Park is the experiment from Japan, which shows that the process of petrification can occur in a few years under the right conditions.
