9 And God saith, `Let the waters under the heavens be collected unto one place, and let the dry land be seen:' and it is so.10 And God calleth to the dry land `Earth,' and to the collection of the waters He hath called `Seas;' and God seeth that [it is] good.11 And God saith, `Let the earth yield tender grass, herb sowing seed, fruit-tree (whose seed [is] in itself) making fruit after its kind, on the earth:' and it is so.12 And the earth bringeth forth tender grass, herb sowing seed after its kind, and tree making fruit (whose seed [is] in itself) after its kind; and God seeth that [it is] good;13 and there is an evening, and there is a morning -- day third. (YLT)In the Ages of Joy Creation Model, the Third Day represents the transformations of the Earth's biosphere that began at the advent of the Phanerozoic Eon, which literally means the age in which visible life appears on Earth. In the scientific definition, visible life refers to individual living organisms large enough to see without a microscope. Prior to the Phanerozoic, life on Earth was visible in some sense: cyanobacteria would assemble in layer upon layer forming large stromatolite formations, but each individual member was a microscopic organism. It appears that there were no, or extremely rare occurrences, of any larger organisms.
Currently, the transition from the Precambrian to the Phanerozoic is set at 541 million years ago, because of the sudden, abundant appearance of hard-body (shelled) Cambrian fossils at that time. However, over the past decade or so, an earlier proliferation of life has been discovered by finding and examining a growing collection of soft-body Pre-Cambrian fossils. The sudden appearance of shell-less animals constitute what is referred to as the Avalon Explosion or alternately the Ediacaran Biota. The time frame for this is estimated to begin at 575 million years ago and marks the true beginning of the Phanerozoic. Whether or not geologic naming conventions will be updated to reflect this is somewhat academic.
Because the text regarding the Third Day in Genesis 1 mentions seas, land and plants, the connection to the appearance of macroscopic (visible) life forms in the seas is typically overlooked. They are not "land plants" after all. However, the dramatic and sudden appearance of complex sea animals after three and half billion years of only microbial life begs some serious investigation.
Why would God, in revealing His creative handiwork through "collecting waters in to one place", "letting dry land appear", and "bringing forth plants", not mention the proliferation of animal life in the seas and then later on land? Sea and land animals, including birds, are of course associated with the Fifth and Sixth Days of Creation. Is it the case that the order of events in the Bible simply doesn't line up with the sequence of events captured in the geologic record? Here I will try to demonstrate otherwise. Genesis 1 is an amazingly structured yet brilliantly succinct account of the history of life on Earth. In order to keep the account succinct, God merely revealed the highlights of his creative handiwork that are most relevant to people throughout history. On the other hand, by structuring Genesis 1 so brilliantly, we can draw parallels between what God did one Day of creation with what He did on other Days of creation.
First off, we know that God is the Creator. We know that wherever and whenever life has appeared and flourished on Earth, God had His hand in it. He is the One with the master plan in mind of just what kinds of life He wanted to appear, when, and for how long. His ultimate goal was to populate Earth with human beings and everything He did along the way supported that objective. Secondly, we know that He did this in stages. There are six days of creation, not just one. And each Day had many things happen, not just a single event. Similarly, there many ways to subdivide the geologic record into larger or smaller sets of events. There is no inherent conflict between God deciding to describe the history of the origin of life on Earth in Six Days and geologists pursuing a very fine-grained view of identifying as many geologic periods as possible. Even geologists group the periods into a few larger periods of time. At Ages of Joy, the goal is to group the geologic periods into a set of larger chronologically arranged periods that best correspond to the Days of Creation.
Please observe the chart above carefully. What it demonstrates is the parallels between the two phases of Day 3 and Days 5 and 6. The first stanza of Day 3, regarding the formation of the seas and the land, parallels Day 5 in which the seas are populated with life and the land with birds. The second stanza of Day 6, regarding the formation of three broad categories of plant life, parallels Day 6 in which God forms three broad categories of animal life.
The point of this parallel is that God always creates life to team in the environments which He forms. When He created the land and the seas, He also willed them to team with life. Does this imply that Days 3, 5, and 6 actually occurred in parallel, chronologically? No, not really. What it does imply is that God's creative handiwork of Days 5 and 6 had an earlier parallel in which He also created the ancient life forms that filled the Earth in long ago Ages. We don't know this directly from Scripture alone, but we can infer it from the scientific record and from Scripture as follows: where and when life exists, God is its Creator.
What can we learn about the plants of Day 3 in contrast to the fish, animals, and birds of Day 3? During Day 3, God created mosses, seed plants, and fruit trees with which to bless the creatures He would form on Days 5 and 6. At the K-T extinction event, 75% of all fish, animals and birds went extinct, including all dinosaurs. All creatures with adult sizes greater than 55 lbs., other than crocodiles and sea turtles, went extinct. This includes virtually all birds and bird-like creatures. Day 5 would usher in a complete overhaul of the life that dominated the oceans. In contrast to the complete change of fauna brought about by the K-T extinction, the flora, plant life, flourished. The fruit trees that were the crown jewel of Day 3 expanded rapidly during Days 4, 5, and 6.
In other words, God highlighted the creation of plants on Day 3, because the major kinds of plants He created on Day 3 are still with us. On the other hand, the kinds of animals He created on Day 3 are no longer with us.
Thus, we can see that there is no conflict between the geologic record of life during the Third Day and what Scripture reveals. By seeing God as the prolific creator of all life, both ancient and modern, we can better see that Genesis 1 reveals the true history of life on Earth.
1 comment:
I welcome your comments on the concepts presented in this post. I have struggled to find similar ideas presented elsewhere, but if you know of such, I would be interested in reading them.
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