Re: Landplantes were not created - says the Bible!
- From: John Harshman <jharshman.diespamdie@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 04 May 2007 13:18:10 GMT
Armin Held wrote:
The emerging of the continents
God said: Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together to one
place, and let dry ground appear! ... And God called the dry ground "land",
and the gathered waters he called "seas" Genesis 1:9-10
The Biblical text sounds simple but nevertheless it is amazing that it
speaks of a time when the earth was totally covered with water. It was only
later that the dry land emerged out of the global ocean. Who would expect
that a mere human writer, an inhabitant of the Middle East might have made
such a statement just out of his own mind?
According to geology the earth was probably covered with a global ocean
early in the Archean eon. Within the long periods of the Archean and the
Proterozoic (Precambrian) the continents emerged between about 4.0 and 1.6
billion years ago.
It is remarkable that the article is used for the mainland, when it is
mentioned for the first time:
Let the dry land appear! Genesis 1:9
In Hebrew, this is normally only done, if something is either already
well-known, or has already been mentioned, or has existed before. Also, it
does not say that the dry land should "come into being", but "become
visible". Therefore, it may be that the mainland existed already before the
tohuwabohu of Genesis 1:2, but that it was flooded during the tohuwabohu.
Later it became "visible" again. Psalm 104 would confirm this view:
The turbulent flood (Hebrew tehom) covered the earth like a garment,
the waters stood above the mountains. Psalm 104:5-6
Here the same "turbulent flood", Hebrew tehom is mentioned, which also
occurs in Genesis 1:2. One detail is amazing: According to the Biblical
report, during the time of the flooding of the earth, "mountains" must
already have been in existence, even though these must have been relatively
low. Then another phase followed, in which the previously flooded
"mountains" rose above the water level:
The waters stood above the mountains. At thy rebuke they fled ...
The mountains rose, the valleys sank, unto the place which thou hadst
founded for them. Psalm 104:7-8
Land Plants: No creative act, but guided evolution!
It is amazing that the Biblical text does not mention a single miracle or
creative act regarding the land plants, but uses expressions which are
intensely "evolutionistic"!
Then God said: Let the land produce (NIV) vegetation ...
And it was so: And the earth brought forth grass ... Genesis 1:11-12
It literally says: "Let the earth cause!" God commandet the dry land bring
forth vegetation. God spoke, but the earth "acted". The Biblical is clear
about this as it does not continue "and God made", but "and the earth caused
the plants to come out". The verb yatsa' used here appears 1,068 times in
the Bible and always means that something which is already existing comes
out of a certain environment:
The various usages of yatsa' ... never deviate much from the main meaning to
come out. (jwth 756)
Very often the scource from which something comes out is not explicitely
mentioned, but has to be concluded from the context. Here are just two of
many examples:
God brought Abram out (of the tent) ... Genesis 15:5
Then the servant brought forth silver articles and clothing (which up to
then had been packed up in their bags). Genesis 24:53 (Further examples:
animals out of the arch: Genesis 8:17, people out of a house or a city:
Genesis 19:5,8, 12, 16, 17; 38:24; 43:23; 45:1)
yatsa' never (!) indicates the creation of a new thing:
We have to keep in mind that the verb does not refer to the creative
acitivity of God in the sense of the first-time production of a thing ...
(Jenni-Westermann, Theological Dictionary, jwth 759)
Therefore the plants of the third day cannot represent a new creation.
Accordingly, already 1,600 years ago, the Biblical report was interpreted in
an "evolutionary" way:
Augustine declared that the plants had been created "causaliter" on the
third day, which means that on that day the earth received the capability to
bring them forth. (mebg 205)
From where did the land plants come out?
The context makes it clear from where the land plants originated: The last
thing mentioned before the coming out of the land plants are the "seas". And
we have already seen that it is exactly there that simple forms of life must
have been in existence since the "breeding" of God over the ancient ocean.
Later, the sunlight penetrated the clouds and enabled some of these
organisms to carry out photosynthesis. Therefore, when the continents rose
on the third "day", this emerging land mass caused some of the existing
plants to adapt to life on the "dry ground", and thus to come out.
The Biblical text speaks of grass, herbs and trees, which seems to reflect
an ascending order in size and development and stresses the fact of the
"coming out". Therefore we probably have to deal with a
"pioneer vegetation", the very beginnings of land plants.
The scientific view
We know very little about the first vegetation on earth, since it dates back
to very ancient times, from which only a small number of fossils have been
found. Furthermore, land plants decay rapidly and are therefore only rarely
preserved as fossils.
In the time of the middle Silurian to early Devonian (approximately 400
million years ago) the first plants can be found which are conserved in some
measure, and which have a recognizable Cuticula, water-leading vessels and
fortified and ramifying stalks and sporangia ... (nudl 87-88)
It is probable that before the more highly developed plants a group of algae
colonized the land at the beginning of the Cambrian (approximately 540
million years ago). At least from this time, the remains of differentiated
large algae can be found, which, in the opinion of some scientists, must
have inhabited shallow water areas, tidal zones, or the mainland (Pflug).
Limits of harmonization
Finally we want to make it clear that there remains a certain tension
between the Biblical report and the natural sciences. The latter assume
today that the colonization of the land by plants took place after the
appearance of the marine animals, while the Biblical report has the reverse
order. Although there are arguments which might reduce these tensions, we do
not want to gloss over the fact that, with the present state of scientific
research on the one hand and our interpretation of Genesis on the other
hand, a harmonization does not seem to be easy in this question.
But whenever we compare the Bible and natural science with each other, we
have to keep one thing in mind: we have to deal with human research, which
is prone to errors and mistakes on both sides. Thus no one will probably
deny that 200 years ago the horizon of the natural sciences was quite
different from that of today. Knowledge increases - and that is also to be
expected for the interpretation of the Bible. Today, much better Bible
editions are available than ever before, and computer programs allow us to
study the original text much more easily and more precisely.
Nevertheless "to err is human", which is true for all areas. Therefore it is
hardly possible that we should ever be able to completely harmonize our
understanding of the "Word of God" and the "creation of God". Both Bible
interpretation and natural science can only be approximations to reality,
because any human knowledge is patchwork (1 Corinthians 13:9). This has also
been stressed by the Nobelist Manfred Eigen:
Because of the limitations of human insight, conflicts between religious and
scientific world views are almost inevitable.
(Manfred Eigen in "Stufen zum Leben", page 275)
For this reason, it is neither realistic nor legitimate to expect that any
Bible interpretation should agree to one hundred percent with the "present
standard of natural sciences". To the contrary, it would be rather dubious
if harmonizing always functioned without difficulties. It is much more
realistic to consider to what remarkable extent the Bible does agree with
what is regarded as "facts" in scientific research today, and then to draw
conclusions accordingly.
As far as the "family tree of heaven and earth" (Genesis 2:4) is concerned,
there can be not doubt: even if some details don't "fit", most of the
principal statements "hit", and the overall view harmonizes amazingly well
with today's scientific standards. This extremely high measure of agreement
is a weighty argument for the Bible being inspired by the Creator, because
in Biblical times, no writer could have given such a precise description of
the evolution of life on his own, simply from the human point of view.
www.urzeitundendzeit.de/creation_and_evolution.htm
It's interesting to me that exactly the same claims are commonly made
both for the Qur'an and for the Vedas. Does that mean they were inspired
by the creator too? Or are their proponents just deluded, in the same
way most of us think you are?
.
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