Does Genesis 1 communicate cosmic history?

Conversation
,
81

Genesis 1 is ostensibly about God creating the heavens and the earth, so the history of the heavens and the earth are relevant. I think the comparison you might be looking for would be to ask if Sponge Bob is a show that utilizes characters based on under-water creatures and to ask if Sponge Bob resembles some other undersea creature more than a sponge and whether Squidward is truly squid-like or better matches some other sea creature. If you can see sea creatures in Sponge Bob, I think I can see the Days of Genesis in the scientific history of the Earth. In fact, the whole Sponge Bob compare is really helpful I think. I might try to develop this analogy further, see if it floats :wink:.

In any case, I find these chats with you very stimulating. Thank you for your engagement.

82

I don’t fully disagree with this. I do think that the days have a topical scope which may partially explain why they leave out some details about other things happening during that day (scientifically speaking). It is possible that the topics are chronologically arranged. In fact, now that I think about it, I kind of like that. Thank you!

83

It isn’t possible, if by that you mean that they’re arranged according to real world events. Your attempts to force-fit a real chronology have failed.

84

That’s the problem. You shouldn’t be able to pick two different times, since according to Genesis they happened on the same day. Since they not only actually happened a very very long time apart, but the origins of beasts of the field, things that crawl, fruiting trees and seed-bearing plants all happened between them the biblical order is hopelessly wrong.

About the only things that Genesis does get in the right order is that the beginning came first, the earth existed before the animals on it and humans were near the end, all of which are very difficult to misorder.

1 Like
85

No, the comparison I’m looking for is the one I provided. Get your own damn comparisons. My point is that your “methods” assume that there is a match to be found and force one to exist. You can’t use that forced match as evidence that science is a good fit to Genesis. There is no reason to suppose that there must be a pony around here somewhere.

86

Basic Dates DAY3-6:

650 MYA - according to Snowball Earth hypothesis, Earth’s surface becomes entirely or nearly entirely covered in frozen water.

DAY 3 starts with:
Gen. 1:9. “Let the waters under heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear.”
Gen. 1:10 “…the waters that were gathered together he called seas.”
Eccl. 1:7 “All streams run into the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again.”

Interpretation: in the warming that followed the Snowball Earth, the dry land appear as the glaciers melted and the melt-water ran into the sea. It was along these river channels that plants first cultivated land.

420 MYA - Origin of Bony Fish
310 MYA - Origin of Teleost Fish - but do not dominate marine ecosystems until post-K/Pg

350-320 MYA - First Seed Plants (Gymnosperm)
300 MYA - pinophytes (pine trees), cycads, ginkgo (Modern orders of gymnosperms)
245 MYA - origin of seed-plant ancestor of angiosperms

252 MYA - P-Tr extinction - benefits to conifers including pine trees; 96% of marine species go extinct
201 MYA - Tr-J extinction - per Wikipedia, plants were left fairly untouched, along with dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and earlier mammals; while up to a third of marine genera went extinct along with all conodonts in the seas and archosauromorphs on land.

Interpretation: While we see the origin of fish predate plants, the combined extinctions of the P-Tr and Tr-J eliminate 96% and then 34% of all marine species while benefiting seed plants and flowering plants. Therefore, the early fish and marine species that went extinct are not the ones referred to in Genesis 1 as being the species over which man would rule (Genesis 1:28). It is the plants that originate at this time that continue to the present day.

125 MYA - true flowering plants by at least this time; probably earlier

100 MYA - Modern Orders of Extant Fruit Trees Radiation (diversify and proliferate)

DAY 4 “…let them [the lights] be for signs and for seasons and for days and years”

66 MYA - Sun governs 24-hour circadian rhythm (+/- 15 minutes); approximately 365 (~369) days per year; ~12 lunar months/year

Interpretation: The focus of Day 4 is the change in the movement of the lights in the sky

66 MYA - K-Pg Extinction of Dinosaurs and other creatures

Interpretation: The K-Pg Extinction cleared the way for the emergence and dominance of the kinds of birds, fish, and animals over which man would come to rule (Gen. 1:28) and was accompanied by the flourishing of fruit trees and seed plants.

DAY 5 “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens”

66-34 MYA - Majority of Modern Orders of Extant Birds Radiation (diversify and proliferate)
66-34 MYA - New Age of Fishes (diversify and proliferate) https://www.pnas.org/content/112/28/8537.full
56-34 MYA - Modern Orders of Bats develop (Biblically grouped with birds in some lists)
56-34 MYA - Modern Orders of Extant Toothed Whales develop (includes killer whales and dolphins, the Leviathan that sport in ships’ wakes; compare Psalm 104:26; great monsters of Genesis 1:21, maybe)

Interpretation: Over the course of the Paleocene and Eocene, modern birds evolve, ray finned fishes come to dominate the marine ecosystem, bats evolve and both toothed and baleen whales evolve.

42 MYA - root of the carnivora order emerges; but E-O extinction will eliminate many branches

34 MYA - E-O Extinction event - most significant restructuring of mammals and land animals since the K-Pg

DAY 6 “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds - livestock and creeping things and beast of the earth according to their kinds.”

23 MYA - bovine (cattle, sheep, goats, etc.)

300K-75K - human beings emerge (depending on various concepts)

Interpretation: domesticated farm animals clearly have their roots in species that evolved after the E-O boundary, as do human beings. What is debatable is “creeping things and beasts”. The E-O extinction affected many land animals and sheared of many side-branches that emerged earlier. Furthermore, recent detailed climatic studies neatly divide the Cenozoic into two periods: Hothouse-Warmhouse from 66 MYA - 34 MYA followed by Coolhouse-Coldhouse from 34-MYA until present. The global climate change affected which animals would thrive and thus which animals would exist for man to rule over. Therefore, I also divide the Cenozoic at that time into Day 5 and Day 6.

87

and also
56-34 MYA - Modern order of Extant cattle and similar livestock develops.

But you chose to look at the origins of the family and species, not the order, for livestock.

You also fudged the dates for carnivores:

The techniques you are using, picking different taxonomic levels and different extinctions and radiations for each type of creature, could be used to produce any order you liked.

So, since you could conclude anything using your methods, you can conclude nothing.

88

Hi Roy. Thanks for your feedback. As I have said before, I don’t think there is a direct correlation between a biblical kind and any particular level in the phylogenetic tree. Furthermore, it is hard or impossible to even say that an order with respect to say plants really equates to an order among animals.

There is a rationale to look at domesticated animals on a more granular level and there are two reasons for doing so:

  1. orders are not equivalent among different species
  2. humans don’t perceive animal similarities along phylogenetic lines.

Let me be specific. Take the Order Chiroptera which is bats as an example. There are 1,400 species of bats comprising 20% of all mammal species. So you might suppose people would have a great deal of familiarity with various bat species, but mostly they don’t. There are big bat and little bats. There are fruit-eating bats and insect-eating bats and blood-sucking bats. But bats are basically bats, in most peoples minds. For example, in Leviticus 11:19 it reads “the stork, the heron of any kind, the hoopoe, and the bat.” So you can see that heron is perceived as being of various kinds, but the bat is just a bat.

Take the Order Artiodactyla in contrast. This order includes everything from bison, to sheep, to whales, to giraffes, to hippopotamus, to wild boars, to cows. The distinction between these different categories of Aartiodactyla is clearly more significant the distinction between the different orders of Chiroptera.

So yes, I went more granular on the Even-toed Ungulates (artiodactyla) because what is perceived as “kinds” will be more granular to human perception. Also, the Biblical text specifically calls out “cattle”. People are very familiar with and dependent upon the distinctions among the various kinds of Artiodactyla.

I think what I did was appropriate. There is a rationale, and I appreciate you drawing that out from me.

89

You’ve just contradicted your own reason for taking a later date for fish.

And you are now cherry-picking bible translations as well as taxonomic ranks. Not all translations say that there are multiple kinds of heron.

There are big artiodactyls and little artiodactyls. There are fruit-eating artiodactyls and insect-eating artiodactyls and blood-sucking artiodactyls… oh. There aren’t any blood-sucking artiodactyls. The only thing I can think of that comes close to an ‘insect-eating’ artiodactyl are baleen whales, and you wouldn’t include them. Even if the distinctions between giraffes, cows and hippos are more significant to humans than the distinctions between vampire bats, fruit bats and horseshoe bats, I’m not sure that the differences are more significant.

I think you went more granular on the artiodactyls because you wanted them to have a later origin to match the biblical account. Human perception is just a convenient justification that you have applied to artiodactyls but not applied to fish (which would make them too old) or to birds (which would make them too recent).

Your claims are ad hoc and inconsistent.