Now, what about the creation account in Genesis? Is it plausible? Can it be reconciled with science? Does it even need to be? Is it meant to be taken literally? Is it a reasonable story, compared to the idea that life arose by itself?
Some have suggested that there are two different creation accounts, one in Genesis 1 and the other in Genesis 2. But the first is simply a broad outline of creation, while the second is focused on the creation of humans in particular.
There are many differences of opinion over how to interpret the creation account. Throughout their early history, Jews probably took the six days literally. After all, one of the commandments given to Israel was to keep the Sabbath, the seventh day, sacred, and not to do any work on that day, because “for six days YHWH made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and he rested on the seventh day. So YHWH blessed the sabbath day, and made it holy.” 1
By working six days and resting on the seventh, God was setting a pattern for the Jews to follow, just as night and day sets the pattern for humans in their daily cycle of work and rest.
Moses wrote that, to God, a thousand years is like yesterday when it is past, and like a watch in the night.2 When the creation account talks about days, could each day represent a thousand years? Some believers thought so, reinforced by the idea that God had said to Adam, “in the day you eat from it, you will certainly die,” 3 talking about the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and bad. According to the story, Adam lived 930 years, just 70 years short of 1,000, indicating that maybe a day could mean a thousand years after all.
On this basis, some believers argued that the six days of creation followed by a day of rest perhaps indicated 6,000 years of creation followed by some kind of 1,000 year sabbath. This is also hinted at in the book of Revelation, where Christ is said to reign for a thousand years.4
The idea of a literal 1,000 year reign later fell out of favor when many Church writers, and then the Church itself, argued that it was symbolic. However, for a long time, many Christian teachers held the view that the Earth was 6,000 or at most 10,000 years old, and the Flood was usually accepted as having taken place literally, although some believed it to perhaps be a more localized flood, rather than one encompassing the whole world.
With the advent of science based on the Naturalistic Assumption, the Biblical worldview was challenged by three newly emerging scientific fields. The first major challenge came from the field of geology. James Hutton assumed the Earth was vastly old, and had been slowly transformed by natural changes. Charles Lyell argued that the present was the key to the past, and that changes to the Earth’s surface needed to be explained by causes known to be in operation at the present time.
The Flood was dealt with, not by disproving it, but by assuming it away, because it was a form of divine intervention, and Hutton and Lyell wanted to explain changes to the Earth naturally. They assumed the Earth must be millions of years old, and that the fossil record, rather than being evidence of a global Flood, represented a record of the life and death of creatures over millions of years. Layers of rocks, sediment and fossils were assumed to represent long eras of the past, rather than material that had been sorted by vast quantities of water in a global catastrophe.
Charles Darwin was deeply influenced by this new geology and its naturalistic framework. He reasoned that if the Earth was vastly old, and that if geology had been shaped very slowly by small changes, then maybe life itself had changed in small increments over millions of years.
In other words, Darwin’s idea of evolution by variation and natural selection followed on from the naturalistic assumptions made by the new geologists. Darwin extended those assumptions to the realm of life itself. His idea of evolution therefore posed the second great challenge to the Biblical account of creation.
Creationists of his day believed God had directly created each species, although the Genesis account only says he made creatures according to their “kinds” (Hebrew, min). Most creationists today think all the species we see probably descended from a relatively small number of “kinds.” By contrast, in Darwin’s hypothesis, all creatures evolved from a universal common ancestor, and are related in a universal “tree of life.”
Later on came the modern field of cosmology. By this time, evolution and an ancient geological timescale had taken root and become widely accepted. Edwin Hubble showed that the universe seemed to be expanding at a fairly steady rate, known as Hubble’s constant. This implied it must have started off much smaller, and had a beginning. While this idea is generally accepted today, it was resisted at first, because it sounded too much like the Genesis account, and many preferred to believe the universe had always been around in some kind of steady state.
But how do you get a universe in the first place? Physicists invented inflation theory to get the expansion of the universe going, using different laws of physics and a completely different definition of Hubble’s constant that allowed the universe to grow exponentially in its initial moments.
The theory of inflation is still controversial, because it doesn’t obey the laws of physics as we know them today. It is, in effect, a naturalistic version of a miracle, but couched in scientific terminology. It is naturalistic in the sense that physicists simply rewrite the laws of nature during this period. This is why inflation makes many scientists uneasy, but the idea persists because all of the other suggested ways for bringing a universe into existence are equally or more fantastical, usually invoking a theoretical multiverse.
Since we can see billions of light years across the universe, most cosmologists assume that the universe must therefore be billions of years old, in what I will call the “Distance/Age Assumption.” The relevance of this will become clear after I have discussed the two main views of the Genesis creation account. Various other “clocks” have also been devised to try and measure the passage of time, which I will talk about a little later.
I have pointed all of this out, because how people interpret the Genesis account of creation depends on which assumptions they accept or reject. These assumptions form lenses through which they see the evidence. To a certain extent, it is also about naturalism versus supernaturalism, or the border between where God is allowed by humans to intervene, to cause something that wouldn’t have happened by itself.
For example, most Christians are willing to accept that the resurrection of Jesus Christ was what we would call a miracle, in that it wouldn’t have happened by itself. In other words, Christians allow for the idea that God can intervene to cause something that wouldn’t have happened if nature had taken its normal course.
Now, let me briefly explain the two main views of the Genesis creation account among those who believe it to be inspired by God. The term “creationist” usually applies to someone who believes the account to be true in some sense.
“Old Earth Creationists” accept that the universe and Earth are billions of years old. Some accept or are neutral toward the evolutionary timetable for the appearance of different types of creatures, but dispute how they came about. Many “Intelligent Design” proponents also tend to fall into this category. Others reject the evolutionary timetable altogether. They accept the Earth as being old, but they view life itself as relatively recent. For some, humans are a particularly recent creation, thousands rather than millions of years old.
“Young Earth Creationists” reject the naturalistic assumptions made in the fields of geology, biology and cosmology, and the timetables produced on the basis of these assumptions. They view the creation of life on Earth as a recent event, about 6,000 years ago, or 10,000 years at most, with a worldwide Flood occurring around 2400BC or thereabouts. They believe the six days of creation involved miracles in the same sense that Jesus’ resurrection, and his feeding of five thousand people from five loaves and two fishes, were miracles.
Now let me briefly explain how both Old and Young Earth Creationists interpret the creation account in Genesis.
I’ll focus on the “Old Earth” viewpoint first. In this view, the six days of creation are usually seen as figurative, not meant to be taken as literal days. They are the equivalent of phases, eras or long periods of time.
The Genesis account says: “This is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day when YHWH God made earth and heavens.” 5 Proponents of an Old Earth viewpoint argue that since the six days of creation are also collectively called a “day,” the word doesn’t have to refer to a literal 24 hour period.
They argue that when God created the heavens and the Earth in the beginning, this included the Sun, Moon and stars. Day 1 was the creation of light, perhaps in a symbolic sense. Day 2 involved a division of waters above and below the expanse. Some argue this involved the formation of a water canopy around the Earth, although it’s difficult to see what would have held it up.
In the era of Day 3, the waters under the expanse were collected together into one place, called “seas,” while the dry land was called “earth” or “land.” In this same epoch, grass, plants and trees also came to be, laying the groundwork for animal life.
In the Day 4 era, God put the Sun, Moon and stars into the sky, to make a division between light and dark, and for day and night. Old Earth proponents argue that God didn’t actually create them here. They had already been created in the beginning, but now they came into clearer view from an Earth perspective.
On “Day 5” came sea creatures and flying creatures, and on “Day 6” came land animals and humans. Presumably creatures like dinosaurs would also have been created in these epochs. Some commentators note that the account says, “let the earth bring forth a living soul according to its kind.” 6 They argue this indicates God may have used evolution to bring forth creatures. Even so, each creature would still be brought forth “according to its kind.”
At some point in the Day 6 epoch, humans came about, and God made them in his image.7 Some Old Earth proponents argue that it doesn’t really matter when humans were created, but rather what matters is, they were distinctive from other living creatures on the Earth. They reflected God’s qualities.
God rested on the seventh day. Some Christians argue this is still running, since there is no “evening and morning” at the end of it. Furthermore, the author of the book of Hebrews suggests there is still a day of rest for the people of God, which many view as a reference to the seventh day of creation.8
Now let me summarize the “Young Earth” viewpoint. They see the seven days as literal. During the first six days, God worked specific miracles to bring about life on Earth.
There was no source of light for the Earth at the start of Day 1, so this is what God created, perhaps as a result of the hovering or vibrating of God’s Spirit over the waters, causing it to heat up or produce light through sonoluminescence, in which bubbles and sound create light, or in some other way.
Together with the 24 hour cycle of the Earth’s rotation around its own axis, these would result in the very first evening and morning. In this sense, Day 1 was the beginning of time as measured by the rotation of the Earth and the light provided by God’s Spirit. It was Day 1 for the Earth.
For Young Earth proponents, this also defines the meaning of the word “day” when combined with a number. It is the sequence of a combined evening and morning. The Hebrew describes the first day as “day one,” while the others are described as “second day,” “third day” and so on.
The division of waters on Day 2 is the subject of debate. Some argue it is describing the creation of a water canopy, but a more common view is that it’s simply talking about the creation of an atmosphere out of the water. This is also called “heavens,” and it’s where birds are later described as flying.9 The Hebrew word for “heavens” (shamayim) is derived from a word meaning “sky” and the Hebrew for “waters” (mayim). Some commentators have pointed out that the first part of the word may also be related to the word for “fire.”
The chemical composition of water, with its two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen, would be useful for making an atmosphere of oxygen. This might also be another effect of the vibrating of the Spirit over the waters on Day 1, perhaps causing oxygen to be released and clouds to form.
Incidentally, in Genesis chapter 2, which focuses on the creation of humans, it says that no rain had yet occurred. Some say that clouds only existed after the Flood. But from a Young Earth point of view, the atmosphere was new. It would perhaps take several days until the Earth’s water cycle fully kicked in. Rainbows could therefore still happen, they simply took on a more symbolic meaning after the Flood, just as crucifixions still happened before the cross became a symbol of Christ’s death.
God spoke to Job about the birth of the sea: “The sea was shut in by doors, when it rushed forth, from the womb it came forth. When I put as its clothing a cloud, and murky darkness its swaddling band, and I broke my statute over it, and I placed a bar and doors and I said, ‘to here you will come and no further, and here your proud mounds will be set.’” 10 This mentions the formation of clouds, and suggests a breaking of the normal laws of physics when he says, “I broke my statute over it.” Unfortunately, most English translations don’t reflect the Hebrew very well here.
On Day 3, God caused the seas to gather and dry land to appear, and he also created seeds, plants and trees. Some seeds will germinate without light. They only need moisture and temperature. However, the account also suggests the Earth began to produce plants and trees as well, so they could have been created fully formed, but not yet sprouting. All that was missing would be sunlight, which would come the next day. Plants that relied on pollination by living creatures would only have to wait a few more days.
On Day 4, God created the Sun and Moon, and put them in the expanse of the heavens, to mark seasons, days and years. In other words, the original light provided by God’s Spirit for the first three days was replaced by more permanent light sources. The atmosphere and clouds created over the previous two days would shield the Earth from the intensity of the Sun. The Moon also controls the tides, and so would have been necessary to keep the sea from overstepping the boundary which had been set the previous day. I will talk about the stars in a moment.
On Day 5 came sea creatures and flying creatures, and on Day 6 came land animals and humans. From a Young Earth perspective, dinosaurs were part of these creations. Some interpret Behemoth and Leviathan in the book of Job as dinosaurs. Certainly, their descriptions sound majestic and fearsome.
Behemoth, for example, “bends its tail like a cedar” and is “the beginning of the ways of God.” 11 Of Leviathan, God says that a person is “hurled down even at the sight of it.” Also, “his sneezing shines light,” and “torches go from his mouth, darts of fire escape. Out of his nostrils go forth smoke, and shoot like a steaming cauldron. His soul sets fire to coal, and a flame goes from his mouth.” 12
This sounds like some kind of a dragon! The dragon in the book of Revelation seems to be alluding to this same creature. God’s description of Leviathan ends by saying: “There is nothing on the ground to rule it, the one made to be without fear. It sees all of the lofty. It is king over all of the sons of pride.” 13
From a Young Earth perspective, these creatures were probably hunted to extinction, which would explain the widespread dragon legends across the world, from the Gilgamesh Epic to stories of kings and saints battling them. Whatever Behemoth and Leviathan were, God describes them as the mightiest of his earthly creations, and dinosaurs seem to have been the most awe-inspiring creatures to have ever lived on this planet – certainly more awesome and terrifying than a hippopotamus or a crocodile, as some have suggested they could be. Some have argued that perhaps they are also alluding to spirit creatures.
Whatever the case, if they were just mythical creatures, this would be like God telling Job to be in awe of the Snark and the Jabberwock, both inventions from the mind of English writer Lewis Carroll. “Here now is the Jabberwock, which I made just before Leviathan, to gyre and gimble in the wabe.” I’m not sure this would have inspired awe in Job’s mind, but rather confusion, as it did with Alice after reading the poem Jabberwocky.14 Behemoth and Leviathan had to be real, if readers of the book of Job, and Job himself, were to understand the point God was making.
From the Young Earth viewpoint, Day 7 was God’s day of rest. It lasted one literal day, just as the Jewish sabbath lasts one literal day to mark God’s rest day. He didn’t need to signal evening and morning at the end of it, because the miracles to bring about life on Earth were completed. However, Jesus said: “My father has been working until now, and I am working.” 15 God only needed one day of rest before he got back to work. The “day” or “sabbath” of rest that Christians enter into, referred to in Hebrews chapter 4, is a metaphorical one, a rest from working only for themselves.16 It is not an ongoing extension of the seventh day.
I have aimed to treat both views fairly here, because while I may have a strong personal preference, I also appreciate that to go from atheism to acceptance that a Creator exists is already a major step, and so I don’t wish to impose my view on you in this regard. However, I will set out my personal opinion more clearly in the next few chapters, along with my reasons for believing what I do.
Furthermore, the apostle Paul talked about one man who has faith to eat everything, but another man who can only eat vegetables. Paul wasn’t talking about vegetarianism, but was giving an illustration about differing opinions and what people’s faith can bear at the time.17
Sometimes a belief can be a stepping stone to a more nuanced one based on better understanding and deeper faith that comes with time, and so I don’t want to put a stumbling block in the way of you coming to accept that YHWH exists, and really did create the heavens and the Earth, regardless of whether he did it in moments, millenniums, or millions of years.
However, many of the traditional views of the Genesis creation account were set in stone before the discovery, pointed out near the start of this letter, that the first chapter of Ezekiel effectively serves as another creation account, related to the formation of the early universe and its particles. Can this shed light on the Genesis account?
The answer is, yes it can. For example, in an early chapter I argued that the cherubs with four faces and wings in Ezekiel’s vision symbolize helium-4 nuclei. These can be parted to create hydrogen nuclei. Alternatively, two helium-4 nuclei can be fused to make beryllium-8, and then in the “triple alpha process,” well-known to physicists, this can be combined with a third helium-4 nucleus to make carbon-12, the basis of life on Earth. Add one more helium-4 and you get oxygen-16. Therefore, if the four living creatures seen by Ezekiel symbolize helium-4 nuclei, the vision contains the chemical pathways to create carbon, oxygen and water.
Of course, energy would also be needed. Ezekiel’s vision says that the spirit of the living creatures was in their wheels, which could represent the energy shells for electrons. Therefore, when God’s Spirit was hovering or vibrating over the waters, this could be a description of energy being used on the water to create light on Day 1 and then an atmosphere on Day 2.
What about the Sun? According to cosmologists, in the earlier universe, space was filled with gas and dust, some left over from supernova explosions. Most of this material was hydrogen and helium, and waves of energy pressed the gas and dust clouds together. The pressure and heat in this ball of mostly hydrogen and helium was enough to begin the process of hydrogen fusion that partly drives the Sun. According to them, this took tens of millions of years, happening all by itself.
Could the Sun have been created in a single day? God would need mostly hydrogen and helium atoms, which I have argued was readily available according to the vision in Ezekiel. God would just need to pull large numbers of them together and tightly compress them so that some would begin to fuse. In other words, it could be done if God had the energy and the will to do it.
Either way, from an Old Earth viewpoint, God could sit back for tens of millions of years and wait for a supernova explosion and gravity to kick in, or in the Young Earth paradigm, he could actively pull hydrogen and helium atoms together into a tight ball that would ignite the process of fusion. He wouldn’t need to hang around for millions of years. The quicker version just requires work on God’s part, which is what he was said to be doing during the six days.
What about the stars? Most Bible translations imply that God created the Sun, the Moon, and also the stars on Day 4. However, the Hebrew doesn’t necessarily say this. Day 4 is focused on the creation of lights to make a distinction between day and night, and to give light on the Earth. Most English translations suggest that God created three things on this day: the greater light to rule the day, the smaller light to rule the night, and also the stars. However, the word “also” isn’t in the Hebrew. It’s an interpretation imposed by translators. The account more literally says: “God made the two great lights, the great light to rule the day and the small light to rule the night and the stars.” 18
In other words, according to the Hebrew, Day 4 may not actually be describing the creation of the stars at all, but could simply be saying the Moon would rule both the night and the stars. But even if not, stars could still be created in a similar way to the creation of the Sun, so this isn’t a problem for Young Earth Creationists. It just requires a lot of energy, which presumably God has. For Old Earth proponents, Day 4 is only describing the luminaries becoming more visible from the Earth anyway, so none of them were directly created on this day.
Now, according to the account in Genesis chapter 2, God was forming the animals of the field and the flying creatures of the heavens, and was bringing them to Adam for him to name. He named all of the beasts, flying creatures, and animals of the field. Old Earth proponents might ask: how could Adam have done this in under 24 hours? Surely he would have needed much more time to study each animal before naming it.
Young Earth proponents would perhaps reply that Adam wasn’t a naturalist. He didn’t need to name everything, such as sea creatures, plants or bacteria. He also didn’t have to name “species,” since distinct species would only come later from the original “kinds” God had created.
For example, horses, zebras and donkeys are considered to be different species, but in the modern classification system they are in the same Equidae family, because they are thought to be closely related. Assuming this is true, Adam would only need to name an “equidae,” and all species of horse, zebra and donkey could have come from this later on. There are less than 200 mammal families, so if the original “kinds” were at or close to the family level, Adam perhaps only had to name a few hundred mammals.
In other words, there were far fewer “kinds” than there are species today. As another example, the modern bird family Fringillidae contains over 200 species, including finches. Other finches are put into the Thraupidae family, which also has over 200 species in it. Both of these families could have come from one pair of birds, or perhaps a handful of different kinds.
Besides, Adam didn’t need to be too imaginative. After God created the woman from one of Adam’s ribs, Adam called her “woman,” because “from man this one was taken.” 19 This hardly sounds like Adam had spent years deeply studying and pondering the nature of women. Instead, it sounds like an immediate observation. It was also a name for her “kind,” rather than a personal name, just as he was “man.”
Only after they had eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and bad, did Adam give her a personal name, Eve, meaning “living one.” 20 Was this many decades after her creation, or just a few days later? The account doesn’t say, but based on the internal logic of the account, it would make more sense if this all happened very fast, within just a day or two of their creation. It would explain why the woman hadn’t been named yet, why the first human pair were so easily enticed, and why Eve listened to a talking serpent. They had literally no experience of life!
Most Christians believe that the talking serpent in the garden of Eden was really Satan, using the creature as a vehicle to catch the woman at a time when she didn’t know much, and talking through it like a ventriloquist would talk through a puppet.
But this begs the question: who or what is Satan, and where did he come from? The word Satan means “adversary” or “accuser.” While many people can become adversaries or accusers of others, the idea of a specific non-human adversary of God first appears in the book of Job, one of the oldest books in the Bible.
“There was a day,” it says, “and the sons of God came to station themselves before YHWH, and Satan also came in their midst.” 21 The Hebrew says “the adversary,” not just any old adversary. In a sense then, “the adversary” became something like a title, just as Jesus Christ in his pre-human form is known to Christians as “the Word,” not just any word.
This makes Satan related to the “sons of God,” which is sometimes used as a term for spirit creatures. Later in the same book, YHWH speaks to Job and asks: “Where were you when I founded the earth? Speak, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements for you to know, or who stretched out the measuring tape over it? Into what were were its pedestals sunk, or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars rejoiced together, and all the sons of God cried out in joy?” 22
In other words, these “sons of God” already existed at the time the Earth was founded, implying there may be some cosmic history beforehand, although the Bible doesn’t specify how long.
There may also be a clue about the origin of Satan in the book of Ezekiel. God tells the prophet to take up a lament for the king of Tyre, but God also says this one is “sealing an outline” 23 or pattern, which could imply God is hiding something deeper in the details. Certainly the description of the king sounds more like someone else who wanted to be like God.24We are told, “in Eden, the garden of God, you came to be.” 25 This would be true if Satan really was behind the serpent.
God says to this one: “You are the anointed cherub, the one covering, and I set you. In the holy mountain of God you came to be. In the midst of the stones of fire you walked. You were flawless in your ways from the day you were created until iniquity was found in you. By the increase of your trade they filled the midst of you with violence, and you sinned; and I will profane you from the mountain of God, and I will destroy you, covering cherub, out of the midst of the stones of fire. Your heart is haughty because of your beauty. You ruin your wisdom by your brightness. I will hurl you to the earth. I will set you before kings, for them to behold you. Because of your many depravities by the sin of your trading, you profaned your sanctuaries. And I will bring forth a fire from the midst of you which will devour you, and I will set you to ash on the earth in the sight of all those seeing you. All those knowing you out of the people will be appalled at you. You will become a terror, and you will be no more forever.” 26
We have already seen from Ezekiel’s first vision, where the four living creatures (later called cherubs) are first introduced, that the stones of fire likely represent particles. Indeed, where the Hebrew says that this anointed cherub walked in the midst of the stones, the King James Version here says he walked “up and down,” just as in Ezekiel, reminding us that protons and neutrons are made of up and down quarks.
In other words, while this passage is nominally talking about the king of Tyre, it could also be a cryptic reference to a cherub who would become what we call Satan, the Adversary. He was the “covering cherub,” although what this means is not entirely clear. He was flawless to begin with, but somehow became haughty, and for whatever reason he became God’s chief adversary. He wasn’t always this, just as a person isn’t born a murderer, but becomes one once they commit murder.
Perhaps as confirmation that this is really talking about Satan, the book of Revelation also says that Satan was cast out of heaven to the Earth. “And the great dragon was thrown out, the ancient serpent, the one called Devil and Satan, the one deceiving the entire inhabited earth. He was thrown to the earth, and his angels were thrown out with him.” 27
The Greek word diabolos means “slanderer,” which is where we get the word “devil” from, coming from a verb meaning “to hurl” as in hurling an accusation. Perhaps this is also why the king of Tyre is hurled to the Earth.
Whatever the case, both Old and Young Earth proponents recognize that spirit creatures must have existed at or prior to the founding of the Earth, because they were there to applaud it, and for the entity who would become known as Satan to develop his haughty heart. The Bible doesn’t give any clear indication as to how long they were around for. That they are called “sons of God” implies they were created by God, but since they aren’t part of earthly creation, they don’t necessarily need to have been created within the “six days,” but they may have been.
Now, I deliberately left a discussion of the Creation account until near the end of this letter, because I don’t think it could be evaluated fairly until we had first examined what nature needed to achieve without a Creator, and also until we had fully looked at the assumptions we bring to the table when discussing the origin of life.
The Genesis account assumes the existence of a God who had the power to create the heavens and the Earth, and it claims he made specific interventions in the natural order he created, working with a purpose in mind – to bring about an abundance of life on Earth, including humans in his image. In short, it is a series of miracles with a goal and purpose.
The naturalistic creation story assumes that the universe inflated by itself out of almost nothing while defying the current laws of physics, although this could be still “natural” if we rewrite the laws of nature during that period.
Life came about all by itself from non-life, and then through the shuffling of nucleotides in molecules, it built for itself highly sophisticated reading and writing equipment, electron transport chains to manipulate subatomic particles, hundreds of thousands of different proteins each built out of hundreds of amino acids, some of them organizing into incredible complexes, and cells organizing into organs of the body and forming into creatures such as frogs, flowers and cats; for no reason other than the immediate survival and reproduction of each wiggly thing that was lucky enough to evolve. Life is an endless cascade of naturalistic miracles, with no overall point to any of it, except to bring more wiggly things into existence and make them wiggle a bit longer. We are incredibly lucky to be here, but it doesn’t actually matter because we won’t be here again in just a moment.
In other words, and let’s be honest here, both creation stories are, for all intents and purposes, miraculous. They are both absolutely incredible.
With the one creation story, the creators are luck and error, with individual creatures in a constant battle for survival until they inevitably become food for the worms. With the other creation story, YHWH is the Creator, who created the Earth and its inhabitants as an expression of his creativity and power, and out of a desire to share the gift of life with others, and who made humans in his image so they could enjoy life in abundance, this inevitable goal only suffering a temporary setback because of the human desire to remain separated from their Creator.
1 Exodus 20:11. 2 Psalm 90:4. 3 Genesis 2:17. 4 Revelation 20:1-6. 5 Genesis 2:4. 6 Genesis 1:24. 7 Genesis 1:26. 8 Hebrews 4:1-10. 9 Genesis 1:20. 10 Job 38:8-11. 11 Job 40:17,19. 12 Job 41:9,18-21. 13 Job 41:33,34. 14 See the poem “Jabberwocky” from Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, by Lewis Carroll, 1871. “’It seems very pretty,’ she said when she had finished it, ‘but it’s rather hard to understand!’ (You see she didn’t like to confess, even to herself, that she couldn’t make it out at all.)” 15 John 5:17. 16 Hebrews 4:10. 17 Romans 14:1-4. 18 Genesis 1:16. 19 Genesis 2:23. 20 Genesis 3:20. 21 Job 1:6. 22 Job 38:4-7. 23 Ezekiel 28:12. 24 Ezekiel 28:2. 25 Ezekiel 28:13. 26 Ezekiel 28:14-18. 27 Revelation 12:9.