Is Genesis Believable?

By David Feddes

Most of us have enormous confidence in science. But would you believe that a
fossil expert could portray a pig as a primate? Believe it or not, that really happened.
Evolutionist scientists announced that they had found a missing link between apes and
humans, and they offered drawings of the skull and skeleton, along with an artist's
portrait of what this ape-man had looked like. Science labeled it Hesperopithecus; the
popular media called it Nebraska Man. With all the details being offered about the way
this missing link looked and how he lived, people were impressed, and few were aware
that the only real fossil the scientists had to go on was a tooth. It was quite a stretch to
figure out so much from just a tooth, but here's the worst part: the tooth was later
identified as coming not from an extinct primate but from a type of pig that today lives
only in Paraguay.
Another missing link was an ape-man which the experts labeled Eoanthropus.
This remarkable skull, popularly known as Piltdown Man, prompted The New York
Times to trumpet the headline, "Darwin Theory Is Proved True." Evolutionary experts
testifying for the ACLU at the "Scopes monkey trial" triumphantly used Piltdown Man to
prove their case. Years later, however, Piltdown was proved a counterfeit. It turned out
that some evolutionists, eager to convince everyone that Darwin was right, had
deliberately put together a fake fossil, using a human skull cap and an orangutan's jaw.
It wasn't even a good forgery, but nobody checked it over closely or challenged its
authenticity. Why not? Because it supported the prevailing theory and the perpetrators
of the fraud had great prestige. As a result, Eoanthropus enjoyed over forty years as
Item A in the evidence for evolution before it was exposed as a fraud.
Now, I don't mention these things because I am anti-science. I value many of the
inventions and technical advances that sound science has achieved. I enjoy scientific
study and try to keep up with some of the major ideas and discoveries. But though I
appreciate science, I know that science is not always right. Science has been right
about many things, but it has also been wrong a lot. Scientists can make honest
mistakes, and some dishonest scientists even concoct false evidence on purpose to
support their pet theories and advance their careers.
This is important to keep in mind, especially when we think about the relationship
between science and the Bible. The book of Genesis, in particular, has been attacked
by some scientists. They insist that there's no way God made the world as the Genesis
account says he did. They say there could not possibly have been a worldwide flood as
described in Genesis. Such challenges might make you wonder, Is Genesis believable?
That's a question we'll return to, but before you ask whether Genesis is believable, first
ask how believable science is.

Moth Myth
Many of us have seen textbooks and TV documentaries which display the
peppered moth as a present-day example of natural selection and survival of the fittest.
The moth comes in light and dark forms. At one time the light colored ones
outnumbered the darker colored ones because, we were told, they blended in better
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with lighter colored tree trunks and were harder for birds to detect and devour. But when
tree trunks became darker because of pollution, the dark moths were better
camouflaged and increased in number, while the light ones stood out and were more
frequently eaten by birds and decreased in number.
This is what we were told, and how could we not believe it? We could see it with
our own eyes. Textbook photos clearly showed light and dark moths on various tree
trunks, leaving no doubt that it would be much easier for birds to find one kind than the
other. Films showed birds in action, eating the easier-to-find moths. Nothing could be
more obvious, except for one problem: peppered moths don't rest on tree trunks!
But how can that be? Photos and films don't lie. Well, sad to say, photos and
films do sometimes lie--if people are staging them to support a theory. It turns out that
the moths being eaten on film were laboratory-bred and were placed onto tree trunks
during the day in sleepy condition for birds to eat while the cameras rolled. The classic
textbook photos were of dead moths glued to tree trunks, not live ones behaving
naturally in the wild. University of Massachusetts biologist Theodore Sargent helped
glue moths onto trees for a Nova documentary and says books and films have featured
"a lot of fraudulent photographs."
Peppered moths, it turns out, come out only at night, and nobody is quite sure
where they rest during the day. They are seldom even seen in their natural habitat. The
best guess is that they rest in high branches, hidden under leaves. But wherever the
moths rest, researchers know that they don't rest on tree trunks during the daytime, so
changes in tree trunk color don't affect whether there are more light moths or dark
moths.
For years the peppered moth was presented as a case of evolution in action.
H.B. Kettlewell, the scientist who did the original work, declared that if Darwin had seen
this, "He would have witnessed the consummation and confirmation of his life's work."
However, even if Kettlewell's moth story had been accurate, it would not have proved
large-scale evolution. It would only have shown that in an existing population, the
relative numbers of dark and light moths can shift in response to environmental
changes. It didn't show the evolution of any new species or any new infusions of genetic
information of the sort that would be necessary for one-celled creatures, over time, to
evolve into human beings. Even so, many Darwinist scientists viewed the peppered
moth as powerful evidence for evolution because it offered a clear example of natural
selection.
But now this classic case study has lost all scientific credibility. A leading
evolutionist conceded that the peppered moth story, which he called "the prize horse in
our stable," has to be thrown out. This realization, he says, gave him the same feeling
as when he found out that Santa Claus was not real.
But get this: even after the moth myth was discredited, some textbook authors
went on using it and kept giving it the same old evolutionist spin. A Canadian teacher
who helped write a science text for Alberta public schools admitted that he and his
colleagues "were aware" of the problems with the moth story when they wrote the book,
but they included it anyway. Why? Because "it is extremely visual," he said. When
students are older, he added, "they can look at the work critically."

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 But if that's the case, why not feature photos of a department store Santa Claus
in a science book? After all, Santa is "extremely visual." Why not teach students that
science has proven Santa's reality? If anyone objects to this approach, just say that
when kids get older, they can check on their own whether the science book was right in
portraying Santa as a proven fact.
Pictures of dead moths glued to tree trunks have as little scientific value as
photos of an actor dressed as Santa Claus, and yet some science educators go right on
teaching young people the moth myth as though it is a scientific fact. Why? Mainly
because they think the moth myth is a persuasive show-and-tell for the kind of natural
selection which supposedly drives the grand process of evolution without a Creator.

An Error-Free Authority
So before you ask, "Is Genesis believable?" first ask whether your favorite
science textbook is believable. Let me say again that I don't want to badmouth science
or deny its many achievements. But I do want to caution against believing every
pronouncement made in the name of science as though it is beyond question. We must
always be alert to the possibility of unintentional mistakes, flawed reasoning, and even
doctored evidence and deliberate lies. We may learn and benefit from science a great
deal, but we should not bow before science as the error-free, final source of all truth.
There is an error-free, final authority we can always believe, but science isn't it;
the Bible is. The Bible comes to us from God himself. God knows all things and never
makes mistakes. God always speaks the truth and never lies. So when God speaks to
us in the Bible, we can believe every word-- starting with the very first chapters of
Genesis. Is Genesis believable? Absolutely, because the words of Genesis are God's
words.
The question Is Genesis believable? is tied to another question: Is Jesus
believable? If Jesus is believable, then Genesis is believable. If Genesis isn't believable,
then Jesus isn't believable either.
Anyone who believes in Jesus Christ must believe the first chapters of Genesis.
There's no doubt that Jesus taught the truth of those chapters. When some people
asked Jesus about God's will for marriage, how did he respond? He quoted from the
first two chapters of Genesis. Jesus echoed the Genesis message that at the beginning,
the Creator made humanity male and female, and that marriage makes the two of them
one flesh. "Therefore," concluded Jesus, "what God has joined together, let man not
separate" (Matthew 19:4-6). Marriage is not merely a humanly evolved way of relating
that we are free to disregard if we wish, said Jesus. Marriage is something God
instituted at the very beginning when he created Adam and Eve, as recorded in
Genesis.
I could point out a variety of occasions when the Lord Jesus Christ made
Genesis a vital part of his teaching, but for now I'll mention just one more. Jesus said
that the time of his Second Coming would be like the time of Noah. "For in the days
before the flood," said Jesus, "people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in
marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would
happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming
of the Son of Man" (Matthew 24:38-39). Jesus plainly taught the reality of Noah, the
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reality of the huge ark he built, and the reality of the flood which swept over the earth as
God's judgment against human evil.
It's clear, then, that Jesus affirmed the early chapters of Genesis. Jesus said,
"Before Abraham was born, I am" (John 8:58). The story of Abraham begins in Genesis
12, so if Christ existed as the Son of God even before Abraham, it means he was there
during the events described in the first eleven chapters of Genesis. Indeed, not only
was he there, but he was vitally involved in those events. The Bible says of Christ, "All
things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold
together" (Colossians 1:16-17). If our guesses and theories about earth's early history
come into conflict with the record in Genesis and the words of Jesus, we must be
quicker to doubt ourselves than to doubt the words of the Lord and Creator.
Sometimes the wisest thing we can do is humbly to confess that there is much
we don't know, and when we're uncertain, to trust the words of God and the Son of God.
A biblical writer in Proverbs 30 said, "I am the most ignorant of men... I have not learned
wisdom, nor have I knowledge of the Holy One. Who has gone up to heaven and come
down? ... Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is his name, and the
name of his son? Tell me if you know? Every word of God is flawless; he is a shield to
those who take refuge in him. Do not add to his words, or he will rebuke you and prove
you a liar" (Proverbs 30:2-6).
In another place God responded to someone who challenged him and demanded
answers from him. The Lord thundered, "Who is this that darkens my counsel with
words without knowledge? ... Where were you when I laid the earth's foundations?" (Job
38:2,4). We may talk confidently as though we have figured out exactly what happened
at the beginning of the universe, but what if our theory is "words without knowledge"?
We weren't there to see what happened, but God was there, and in the early chapters of
Genesis he tells us the basics of what we need to know about the earliest history of the
universe and of humanity.
Genesis is so important for the New Testament gospel of Christ that the New
Testament refers to Genesis over 200 times. People may doubt the truth of Genesis,
but when people disagree with God, "let God be true and every man a liar" (Romans
3:4). Genesis is true as surely as God is truthful, as surely as Jesus is God's Son, as
surely as the whole Bible is God's Word.

The New Know-it-alls

Does this mean that Christians are always right about every idea which they say
comes from Genesis? No, just because Genesis is always right does not mean
Christians are always right about what Genesis is saying. At various points in history,
Christians have misunderstood or misapplied the Bible's teaching in various ways.
These past blunders ought to remind Christians not to act like know-it-alls but to realize
that we are sometimes mistaken.
The most famous and embarrassing case is when church officials opposed
Galileo for saying that the earth orbits around the sun. The Bible itself doesn't even deal
with that question, but some important people (spurred on by the science establishment
of that day) took a verse out of context and persecuted Galileo.

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 But we're not living in Galileo's time any more. That was centuries ago. These
days, people are less likely to think they know it all based on the Bible and more likely to
think they know it all based on science. These days persecution usually comes from
evolutionists and their lawyers who want to suppress any public school teacher who
questions any aspect of evolution or even hints that this world bears the marks of
intelligent design or a divine Creator. These days the most common problem is not that
we believe too strongly in Genesis or in our interpretation of it, but that we don't believe
Genesis and have too little confidence in its factual reliability. These days, when a
scientific theory appears to contradict something in Genesis, people tend either to reject
Genesis or else to revise the understanding of it so drastically that the reinterpretation
bears little resemblance to what Genesis actually says. Once upon a time, theologians
and preachers may have been too sure of themselves and too quick to reject new
scientific ideas, but these days, many are so unsure of their own beliefs and so quick to
yield to any scientific claim that their beliefs about Genesis change with every shift in
the winds of biology or cosmology.
We don't want to end up looking like dimwitted dunces who disagree with
scientific findings, like the misguided opponents of Galileo. But in situations where
scientific ideas seem to be at odds with biblical teaching, why think only of Galileo and
the church's error? Why not also remember brontosaurus, Piltdown Man, the peppered
moth myth, and other blunders, hoaxes and myths of modern science? And why not
pause for a moment to remember that every major scientific theory in history has
eventually been discarded and replaced with another.
Somehow science, despite many errors, has gained an aura of absolute truth.
But science has all the glitches and weaknesses of the people who carry on scientific
investigation and analyze the results. Del Ratzsch, a philosopher of science, says that
even at its best, "science seems to have a serious and incurable case of the humans."
Ratzsch points out that just about the only sure thing about the overarching theories of
science is that they will eventually be discarded and replaced: "After the twists, turns,
false starts and revolutions found in the history of science," says Ratzsch, "it would be
pretty amazing if we were the ones in the right time out of all history who were here
when the truth finally arrived." What seems absolutely certain today may be laughed at
by scientists a hundred years from now.
What does this mean in relation to Genesis? It means if a particular scientist or
theory contradicts the creation account or the flood of Noah's time, we shouldn't be
embarrassed to go right on believing what God says in Genesis. In response to new
scientific information, we may examine our own understanding of Genesis to make sure
we haven't been reading some things into it that aren't there. But even as we
doublecheck our interpretation, we should have no doubt that Genesis itself, rightly
understood, is absolutely true and without error.
Now, I've been discussing what happens in cases where the Bible and science
might come into conflict, but let's not get the wrong idea. The Bible and science are in
harmony far more than they are at odds. When science correctly interprets the world
God made, and when faith correctly interprets what God says in the Bible, there is no
conflict between science and faith.

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Why Not Believe?
But, you might ask, hasn't evolution become so certain that Genesis is no longer
believable? Well, a human theory is never more believable than the Word of God. But in
case you think people reject Genesis and believe in random evolution because of clear,
indisputable evidence, just listen to the words of some true believers in evolution. A
noted atheistic biologist said that belief in evolution comes "not so much from motives
deduced from natural history as from motives based on personal philosophic opinion. If
one takes his stand upon the exclusive ground of fact, it must be acknowledged that the
formation of one species from another species has not been demonstrated at all."
Atheist Richard Dawkins of Oxford said, "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually
fulfilled atheist." "Even if there were no actual evidence in favor of the Darwinian
theory," asserted Dawkins, " we should still be justified in preferring it over all rival
theories." Another scientist who rejects the Creator said, "Evolution itself is accepted by
zoologists, not because it has been observed to occur, or can be proved by logically
coherent evidence to be true, but because the only alternative, special creation, is
clearly incredible."
Faith in evolution is people's attempt to avoid the God who made them.
Sometimes it is claimed that Christians believe in the personal, caring Creator for no
sound reason, simply because they want God to be real. But the fact is, many people
deny the Creator because they don't want him to be real. They would rather believe they
are meaningless accidents than be responsible to the Creator. Famous author Aldous
Huxley chose to believe in random evolution, not because of evidence, but so that he
could enjoy sexual freedom and do whatever he wanted without considering the God of
the Bible. "For myself," said Huxley, "as, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the
philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and
political." Meaningless evolution provided a scientific-sounding concept to make
rejection of God reasonable and respectable. As Huxley put it, "I had motives for not
wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was
able without difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption."
But reality can't be reinvented for our own sexual and political convenience.
Genesis tells the truth, whether we want to believe it or not. Genesis tells us where we
came from and who made us. Genesis shows us how Adam and Eve fell into sin and
brought themselves, their world, and their descendants under a curse. Genesis shows
God's judgment against our sin and offers God's promise of a Savior, a promise that
God fulfilled through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The gospel
message is that if you believe in the Lord Jesus, you will be saved. And where does
belief in the Lord Jesus begin? With belief in God's Word, the Bible, beginning with
Genesis.

Originally prepared by David Feddes for Back to God Ministries International. Used with permission.