Genesis 2:15-25

Man was given a task, and clear instructions, this included one limit on what he could not do, he was not allowed to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Ever since man has been trying to work out good and evil for himself, instead of relying on God's knowledge. People always complain that God wants to restrict man's freedom, but the truth is that God gives man great freedom. Adam was free to eat from any tree, except one. As an aside, the nature of the writing here seems to be more consistent with an allegorical tale.

We now come to the creation of woman. Interestingly, this is the only account of the creating of woman in ancient Near Eastern literature. God's intention was to give man a suitable helper. God brought all the animals to Adam to name, implying that he was to have authority over them. So Adam named all the animals and birds.

None of these proved to be a suitable helper for Adam. So God created woman. She was made out of the same "stuff" as Adam, so is equal, but different. Adam found a true soul mate. Men and women are meant to live together in harmony. They are meant to form a new "unit" independent from their parents. Moreover, they were naked but not ashamed, ie they were completely comfortable in each other's presence. The fall has led to the potential loss of all these things.

Genesis 2:4-14

The first chapter has dealt with the whole of creation, now this chapter focuses on the creation of man. This again emphasises that man is the centrepiece of creation. We are different from animals.

Again we see a process of creation being described. There are two key features to the creation of man. He both created from the dust of the earth and God breathed life into him. So there is a natural side to his creation, made from the basic building blocks of the earth, but without God breathing life into the man he would not be alive. This is what I meant in part of my preamble when I said evolution cannot ever fully explain man (even if it was ever shown to be largely true, which is by no means certain). For we are much more than just the basing building blocks of the earth.

The Lord placed man in the Garden of Eden. Man was created with a purpose. Note also that everything was pleasing to the eye and good for food.

The final few verses of this section give some details of the geographic location. The location of Pishon and Gihon are unknown, but Ashur is known to be an ancient capital city of Assyria.

Genesis 1:20-2:3

Now life starts to be created, first of all living creatures in the water and birds in the air. The creatures were commanded to be fruitful and multiply, and to fill the earth.

The next day God made the land creatures. Again it is emphasised that every kind of living creature was made by God.

Mankind was also created on the same day. The key feature of mankind is that he was created in God's image. We were created to rule over all the other living creatures. Man is distinct from all the other animals. All talk about us just being another animal, or that other animals are equal with us and have equal "rights" is nonsense. Now this does not give us the right to mistreat animals, and we are to use this authority to take good care of the earth, not to exploit it. But we are worth more than animals.

We were created in the image of God, male and female. So we also see that right from the beginning male and female are of equal value. We too were blessed by God and given the command to multiply, we were also told to subdue the earth. It also appears that originally everything was vegetarian.

On the seventh day God rested from His creation. This signifies completeness. Some use this as an argument against evolution, but this seems rather dubious. For in one sense Christ completed His work of salvation on the cross, yet we also see that salvation work extending across space and time.

Genesis 1:3-19

Each of the days is introduced with the words "And God said ...". The word of God is powerful and creative. There are a number of key points that can be learnt from these days:

• God was the source and initiator of creation.
• Everything that was created was good.
• There was a process to creation.

Every day also includes God calling things a name. A king naming something indicated the king had authority over the person named. So Genesis is declaring that God has authority over all creation, this was demonstrated most graphically through Jesus when He calmed the storm. We need to know that God has authority over the natural world.

All the descriptions are showing that once there was nothing, but God created the things that we see.

While some take each day to be a 24 hour day, others see each day as a period. Some seek to see the sequence of events as a description of the order in which things happened. Yet others see the days as events rather than a linear progression. In the West we think very much in terms of linear time, while Hebrew thought was often more focused on events. To understand the difference consider the difference between Match of the Day and Football Focus. Match of the Day shows highlights of a football match. While it does not show everything, the things it does show did occur in the order they are shown. Now Football Focus might have an item looking at a particular player, or a particular aspect of play. In this case there is no guarantee that the order in which things are shown signifies anything about the chronology. In some cases it might, in others it might not. It is possible that something of this applies to Genesis 1, though by no means certain.

Some thought (and some still think) that the stars and planets govern our lives. Genesis makes it clear that they do not. And all are under God's authority. Moreover, He is Lord of the day and of the night.

Genesis 1:1-2

In its day Genesis provided a real challenge to the prevailing myths of creation. Most cultures and religions had stories of the world arising out of a conflict between the "gods". In contrast, Genesis declares that the one true God created the whole world. He did not have to overcome anyone or anything in order to do this, it was His decision alone. By a series of declarations the world and everything associated with it was created.

Genesis is equally valid and equally challenging to us today. This is one of the reasons why there is such a hot debate over evolution. The prevailing myth today is that it all happened by chance and without purpose. In contrast, Genesis states clearly that we were created on purpose, with a purpose and for a purpose. We are the result of deliberate creative acts by God, indeed the whole of creation is a result of deliberate creative acts.

The Holy Spirit was intimately involved in creation. Without God the earth was formless and empty. Indeed, without God there would be nothing at all.

Genesis - Evolution Part 3

I think this will be the last rambling on evolution before starting on the actual text itself. I will look at where all this leaves us.

Evolution can be split into two broad categories: micro and macro evolution. Micro-evolution is to do with the development within species and occasionally of new species. This can be observed in nature, and some creationists are perfectly happy to accept this, it really isn't a problem. Macro-evolution is about how radical changes took place, and this is where the problems lie.

I do not believe that evolution as a scientific attempt to try and explain the process of how lifeforms developed (in a physical and biochemical sense) is against the Bible. In fact it is perfectly reasonable thing to do. In Genesis God gave Adam the task of naming the animals, I take this as God giving man permission to seek to explore and explain the world in a scientific sense. In doing this, we need to recognise the enormity of what we are trying to do, which is to explain the development of every lifeform. Therefore a little humility and caution is in order. If you think you have explained the whole of life then just remember we have enough problems explaining a dripping tap (an example of turbulence, and turbulence is a nightmare, but a very interesting one), so you might just have got some things not quite right, or there may be a few gaps.

This last point also cuts both ways. Sometimes creationists take great delight in finding a hole in some aspect of evolutionary theory, or a gap/error in the fossil record. Well what a surprise! The theory doesn't quite work perfectly, it still has much work to be done, and may even be wrong. But some imperfections do not prove that it is complete nonsense.

A believe that Christians should work in the field of evolution, and help to ensure that the science is done properly. Equally, if there is proper evidence that fits better with a creationist point of view, then it should be allowed to be presented fairly.

Let me close by saying this. Science does NOT disprove the Bible, it does NOT disprove God. Anyone who says this is being completely unscientific. We need to focus on the right battle ground, and the 6-day v billions of years is not the right one, nor is he one over whether God uses evolution as part of the process of creation (maybe He did, meybe He didn't). We should engage in battle when evolution becomes a religion, like that espoused by Richard Dawkins.

Postscript

One further example of "punk science" that you regularly hear on the news. About two or three times a year you will hear reports on the news that scientists have found evidence for life on other planets., and it will be said that "since there are so many billions of starts, galaxies, solar systems and planets some of them are bound to support life". This is utterly unscientific. We have absolutely no idea what the probability of life forming is (even accepting that this is a sensible way to look at it), except that it is extremely small, and until we know this probability, or have a lower bound on its value, then we have no idea how many planets there need to be in order for it to be more likely than not that life exists elsewhere.

Genesis - Evolution Part 2

Evolution is extremely important because evolution theory has become much more than a scientific theory, but a religion. They would call it a philosophy, but the way some people treat it is as an explanation of the whole of life.

One thing that can be said with absolute certainty is that evolution most definitely does notexplain the creation of man. It may possibly explain something of the physical development of man, but that is as far as it can go (and even over that there are questions). This is because we are much more than just a physical and biochemical entity. God breathed life into man, we are unique amongst all other lifeforms. Even on apure observational level we are radically different from other lifeforms. Evolutionary theory relies on lifeforms adapting to their environment. Mankind is radically different in that he seeks to adapt the environment to himself. We are different, we are not just animals. In Biblical terms, we were told to look after the earth and have dominion over it, we were made in the image of God.

The thing that puts me off evolutionists is that some of them are so unscientific. They have a habit of claiming way too much from the evidence (so do some creationists, by the way), but most importantly is when they go off into the realms of philosophy/religion. One "evolutionary theory" is that religious or altruistic motives arose as a result of evolution, and therefore have no intrinsic value. However, one then has to apply the same logic to the idea of evolution and so evolutionary theory has not intrinsic value either.

Evolution is also becoming very intolerant. Recently someone was forced to resign from the Royal Society for merely suggesting that creationism should be looked at. The Royal Society should be ashamed of itself over this and was acting in an utterly unscientific manner.