From: jgacker@news.gsfc.nasa.gov (James G. Acker)
Subject: Progressive Creationism Part 4
Summary:  Discussion of problems with ProCre 
Keywords: order, words, death
Organization: Goddard Space Flight Center
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 13:13:52 GMT


     Progressive Creationism Part 4, from James Montgomery
Boice's "GENESIS:  An Expositional Commentary"

     "WHAT ARE THE PROBLEMS?

     Some of the problems with this view have already been
suggested.  The most obvious are the apparent discrepancies
between the fossil record and the order in which plants,
fish, and land animals are said to have been created in
Genesis.  This is serious.  On the other hand, it is not of
such weight as to immediately disqualify the theory.
Science assumes that life first appeared in the oceans or
other watery places, but it does not know this and it is
possible that life may have appeared on land before it
appeared in the water.  Moreover, if one discounts the
earliest forms of life such as algae, bacteria, and seaweed,
which mean a great deal to botanists (ED. NOTE:  I wish he
knew bacteria are animals) but are probably not in view in
Genesis at all, the order of the appearance of life in
Genesis and in the fossil record is quite similar.
     Second, there is the linguistic problem of taking the
days of Genesis as long periods, which the six-day
creationists regard as impossible.  This has already been
discussed in presenting the creationist's view.  Here we may
simply note that there are at least two sides to the
argument.  On the surface it would be natural to take the
word "day" in Genesis 1 as referring to a literal twenty-
four hour day.  But even this is not without question, for
the account clearly indicates that God did not establish the
sun and other heavenly bodies for the regulating of "seasons
and days and years" until day four.  (ED. NOTE:  Take that,
Gish!)  Augustine noted this 1500 years ago, and so have
others.  James Orr wrote, "It is at least as difficult to
suppose that ordinary days of twenty-four hours are
intended, in view of the writer's express statement that
such days did not commence till the fourth stage of
creation, as to believe they are symbols." (3)  There are
other places even in Moses' writings where "day" clearly
means "period" (cf Genesis 2:4;  Psalm 90:4).

(3)  "Christian View", p. 421

     The third, and in my judgment, most telling objection
to the progressive creation theory is that it introduces
death into the world before the fall (or even the creation)
of Adam.  If death was the punishment for sin, as the Bible
seems to indicate, and if this punishment was imposed upon
the whole world (including the animals) as the result of
Adam's sin, then there could no have been death in the world
before Adam, and the fossil record must be post-Adamic, as
the Flood geologists state.  Morris puts it tersely:  "The
day-age theory.... accepts as real the existence of death
before sin, in direct contradiction to the Biblical teaching
that death is a divine judgment on man's dominion because of
man's sin (Romans 5:12).  Thus it assumes that suffering and
death comprise an integral part of God's work of creating
and preparing the world for man;  and this in effect
pictures God as a sadistic ogre, not as the Biblical God of
grace and love". (4)  (ED. NOTE:  The same God who burned
everybody in Sodom and Gomorrah to death, among other
things, but I digress.)

(4) "The Genesis Record", p. 54.

     The objection is serious, but these points must be
considered:
     1.  The actual curse of God as the result of man's sin,
recorded in Genesis 3, says nothing about the animals.  It
is a curse on four things only:  the man, the woman, the
serpent, and the ground for the man's sake.  Nowhere is it
said that the earth or universe underwent a drastic
transformation, nor even that the serpent, an animal, was to
die in punishment for its part in the temptation.  Its curse
was only to crawl on its belly and thus be cursed "above all
the livestock and the wild animals" (Genesis 3:14).
     2.  The curse on Adam and Eve did not involve physical
death only, though that was horrible enough in that they
were created for communion with God who is eternal;  it
involved spiritual death.  But this does not really pertain
to the animal realm in that animals do not have God-
consciousness in the first place.  It is conceivable that
animals could be created to enjoy a normal life span and
then to die without this having any of the judgmental
qualities death has for man.
     3.  The texts often cited from the New Testament in
support of the view that death came to the animal world as a
result of man's sin do not prove the point.  Romans 8:19-21
does not contrast the present imperfection of the world with
a more glorious past state but with the future state when it
shall be delivered from its "bondage to decay" (ED. NOTE:  I've
thought of this particular passage as the Biblical statement
of the 2nd law of thermodynamics) along with the final
redemption of God's children.  Similarly, Romans 5:12,
though it speaks of the introduction of death into the world
through Adam's sin, does not necessarily speak of the
infliction of this penalty on any creature other than man.
(ED. NOTE:  Politely refuting Morris.)
     4.  It is hard to imagine a world of living things in
which death does not occur in some form, if only because
living things live by eating other living things.  Even
assuming that the carnivores were herbivores before Adam's
fall, these still had to eat plants which thereby died.
Did birds eat insects?  Did fish not eat other fish?  We can
imagine that the birds all ate berries;  but even if the
fish ate plankton, the plankton died.
     In view of these points, progressive creationists would
argue that death did indeed exist in the world before Adam -
-- otherwise, how would he know what the threat of death
meant ("You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die").
But it did not have the horror for animals that it had for
Adam and has for us today.  Young writes "The most that can
be said with certainty about the effect of the fall on
geological phenomena is that it introduced death and
suffering into the human race for the first time... It cannot
be proved from the Scripture that the curse resulted in
anything other than pain, sorrow, agonizing labor, and death
for man and degradation for the serpent.  Ideas about
structural changes in the animals, death among animals, and
drastic transformations of nature such as the laws of
thermodynamics must from a Scriptural perspective forever
remain pure speculations".  (5)

(5) "Creation and the Flood", p. 168.

Boice's summary next.

Disclaimer (short form):  Boice's views are not my views.

     Jim Acker
     jgacker@neptune.gsfc.nasa.gov



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