TWO SEPARATE AND CONTRADICTORY CREATION STORIES IN GENESIS

WHY DOES IT SEEM LIKE THERE ARE TWO SEPARATE AND CONTRADICTORY CREATION STORIES IN GENESIS?

There is probably no part of the Bible that receives more criticism than the Genesis creation story. The major critique comes from the theory of evolution which challenges God as the Creator of the world. However, a literary attack alleges that the Genesis narrative contains two separate and contradictory creation stories. This critique asserts that the first creation story (Gen. 1:1-2:3) describes God’s creation of the world in six days and His resting on the seventh. It also alleges that a second story occurs in Genesis 2:4-25, depicting God’s creation of humanity and the animals.

UNDERSTANDING THE LITERARY STRUCTURE

This allegation misunderstands the literary structure of the creation story in Genesis. The author laid out the narrative in a progressively more detailed way. The narrative begins in Genesis 1:1 with a summary statement: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” This synopsis declares that God is the Creator of everything. The phrase, “the heavens and the earth” is called a merism, a figure of speech that uses two contrasting or opposite parts to describe the whole. So, if you say that you’ve searched your house from “top to bottom,’ you are using a merism, meaning you searched your entire house. In the same way, God's creation of “the heavens and the earth” means that God made everything, the whole world.

In Genesis 1:2—2:3, the author provides a more detailed description of how God made the world in six days, and then how He ceased His creative activity on the seventh day.

God begins His creative work by identifying what He made initially—a world described as “a wilderness and a wasteland” (a more descriptive translation than the more common “formless and void”). God made the world and set the raw materials of creation entirely under water. Then “the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters” as the agent who would carry out the formation of the world into a habitable place for humanity (Gen. 1:2). The rest of the chapter describes God’s creative work over the six days of creation: Day One—Light (1:3-5); Day Two—Separation of Sky and Water (1:6-8); Day Three—Land/Vegetation (1:9-13); Day Four—Luminaries (1:14-19); Day Five—Birds/Sea Creatures (1:20-23); Day Six—Animals and Humanity (1:24-31). Then, on the seventh day, God rested or ceased from His creative activity (2:1-3).

After detailing the events of the six days of creation, the narrative continues with even greater specificity in Genesis 2:4-25. This section focuses entirely on the sixth day of creation and provides the particulars of the forming of the first man and first woman, concluding with the establishment of marriage. It is helpful to look at the creation story as happening in three movements. The first movement begins with a sum-mary statement, declaring that during “the beginning” God made everything (Gen. 1:1).

The second movement gives the details of creation by showing how God formed everything in six days and ceased His creative activity on the seventh (Gen. 1:2-2:3). The third movement focuses on the events of the sixth day, particularly how God made the first man and first woman and established marriage. The creation narrative is one story, explained with more and more specificity, not two separate and competing creation accounts.

THE ANSWER TO THE TWO-CREATION ALLEGATION

So what prompted the idea of two competing stories? Three pieces of evidence are cited to maintain that 1:1-2:3 is separate and distinct from 2:4-25. First, the alleged use of two different names for God. Second, the allegation of conflicting times for the creation of vegetation. And third, the contention that the two stories invert the sequence of the creation of animals and humanity. There are some simple answers to these arguments, and you will see that we don't need to abandon the unity of the creation story in the face of these “problems.” Let’s consider each of these in turn.

Two Differing Names for God

First, there is the alleged use of two differing names for God. Critics maintain that in version one, the author uses Elohim (Gen. 1) but in version two God is called Yahweh Elohim or Lord God (Gen. 2). Although two different names for God are used in the creation account, this does not indicate two different stories.

It’s not uncommon for the Scriptures to use different names and/or titles for God within the same book or passage (see Ex. 3:4, 4:5; Lev. 21:6; Deut. 6:4; Ps. 14:5-6). It is also common for Ancient Near Eastern literature to use different names and/or titles for their deities without critics contending that these non-biblical stories have differ-ent sources and authors.

In the Bible, different names for God are used for different purposes. Elohim (God) refers to God’s power. Therefore, it’s used in Genesis 1 when describing God’s power to create the world in six days. Alternatively, Yahweh Elohim (Lord God) is God’s relational name. That’s the reason it’s used in the story about creating humanity. Yahweh is the preferred name when describing God’s covenantal relation-ship with people (Gen. 12:1-9; 15:1-21). An illustration of these two uses of God’s names is in Psalm 19. In the first six verses, the psalmist uses the name Elohim (God) because it describes God’s powerful creation as a way He disclosed Himself to the world. In verses 7-14, the psalmist repeatedly uses Yahweh (the Lord), God’s relational name, because it describes the Lord’s relationship with those who know Him as their Rock and Redeemer (v. 14). Clearly, Psalm 19 is a unified poem about God, but it uses two different names of God to reveal Him.

Differing Order of Creating Vegetation

The second supposed proof of competing stories has to do with the creation of vegetation. It is argued that in version one, God makes vegetation on the third day (Gen. 1:11-12) but in version two, there is no vegetation yet, even on the day God made humanity, what would be the sixth day (2:5). It is true that Genesis 1:11-12 says that on the third day God brought forth “vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit... with seed in them.”

Yet, in the next chapter, describing the sixth day, it states that “no shrub of the field was yet in the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted” (2:5). On the surface, this appears to be a contradiction, but a closer look will reveal that they harmonize easily if the words are understood correctly.

Describing the sixth day, in Genesis 2:5, the word “shrub” is a general Hebrew term for thorns and thistles and the words “plant of the field” speak of cultivated grains. Only after Adam sinned would God tell him that, as part of the consequences for sinning, he would now have to work the fields, eating the plants he cultivated by battling thorns and thistles (3:18). Therefore, in Genesis 2:5, the lack of thorns and thistles (weeds) and cultivated grain was merely because no rain had yet fallen. By the sixth day, humanity had not yet been created to work the fields, and most importantly, there had not yet been any sin, so there were no thorns or thistles. On the third day, God had indeed made wild seed-bearing vegetation and fruit trees (1:11-12) but as of yet, on the sixth there were no weeds or cultivated grains (2:5).

Differing Order of Creating Animals and Humans

The third allegation of two separate stories has to do with the order of the creation of animals and humans. It is claimed that in version one God made the animals first and then humans (Gen. 1:20—26) but in version two, God made Adam first (2:18-20) and then the animals.

This alleged contradiction about the chronological order of creation can again be harmonized with a simple understanding of the Hebrew language. According to Genesis 1:24—31, on the sixth day God made the animals first (vv. 24-25) and then He made humans (vv. 26-27). In the more detailed description of the creation of humanity (Gen. 2:4—25), there was no mention of the animals initially, but God formed man out of the dust of the earth (2:7).

Then, to demonstrate that the man needed a female partner, the Lord brought a parade of animals to him and Adam gave them names (not Blacky, Rover, Nino or Fido, but species names). Since this chapter had not yet mentioned the creation of animals, the verb in Genesis 2:19 should be translated as a pluperfect: “Out of the ground the Lord God had (previously) formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and (now) brought them to the man...” The second chapter of Genesis details God's creation of humanity as male and female. The animals were only mentioned here to demonstrate that it was not good for the man to be alone and the previously created animals (Gen. 1:24-31) were not sufficient to fill the need for human partnership.

ONE UNIFIED CREATION STORY

By better understanding the literary context and Hebrew language, it is clear that there is one harmonious and consistent creation story in Genesis told in three movements, with each movement giving a more detailed look at God’s creative activity. It’s not two separate stories put together in a contradictory patchwork but a unified and consistent whole.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Most importantly, this unified creation story reveals that the Creator of the universe is the very same God who chose Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, delivered the twelve tribes of Israel from Egypt, gave them the Sinai Covenant, and guided them through the wilderness to the Promised Land. Ultimately, the Creator, the God of Israel, became a man, Jesus of Nazareth, who died as a sacrifice to pay for sin and was raised from the dead, granting forgiveness and an eternal relationship to any person who trusts in Him.

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Creation Story in the Bible. CAN WE BELIEVE THAT GOD CREATED THE WORLD IN SIX DAYS?

IS THE STORY OF CREATION IN GENESIS TO BE TAKEN LITERALLY? HOW CAN A MODERN PERSON BELIEVE THAT GOD CREATED THE WORLD IN SIX DAYS?

It seems most of the time in America a Christian who runs for public office, someone in the press will ask, “Do you believe in the creation story as found in the Bible or do you believe in evolution?” If candidates say they believe the Bible, the press will ridicule them for being unscientific and unfit for public service. And this is not just a hot-button issue for hostile reporters.

Sometimes, friendly seekers will ask followers of Jesus the same question. There are genuine and thoughtful people who are considering faith in Jesus as their forgiver of sin and their leader in life, but stumble over the issue of creation as revealed in the book of Genesis. That’s why it’s essential for believers to understand the answer to this most basic question: Can a sane and thinking person believe the literal story of creation as found in Genesis 1-2? The answer to this question is an emphatic “Yes!” While many Bible-believing Christians hold to other views, we (I) believe God created the world in six literal days. The following explains why I (we) believe about the creation narrative.

THE MEANING OF THE CREATION STORY

To begin, I believe in a Young Earth Creation Theory. By that it mean, the world is not billions and billions of years old, as Carl Sagan put it. Rather, the Scriptures point to a world made much more recently. That doesn’t mean Bishop Ussher’s creation date of 4004 BC is correct. The sixteenth-century biblical scholar came up with that date by counting up the years in the genealogies in the early parts of Genesis. What he seemed to overlook is that these ancient genealogical records didn’t have to include every name in a family—a genealogy might just record every fourth or fifth generation or maybe even skip more than that. So, for the earth to be young, it need not be a mere 6,000 years old. Creation might have begun in 20,000 BC or even 50,000 BC. None of us really knows the actual date of creation.

Second, I believe that the word “day” as used in Genesis 1 of the six days of creation refers to a normal 24-hour day. That’s not to say that the word can’t mean a period of time. In fact, that’s exactly how it is used in Genesis 2:4—it calls the six days of creation “the day” or the period of time in which God made the world. Of course, we know the Bible also talks about the day of the Lord, and that’s not a 24-hour day but an extended period of time (e.g., Joel 2:31; 3:14). As a result, there are some respectable and responsible Bible interpreters who view the six days of creation as figurative for six ages in which God oversaw the evolutionary development of the world.

Even though I don’t agree with them, I believe that they are still fellow followers of Jesus. On this we can certainly agree to disagree without being disagreeable. The reason the word “day” in the first chapter of Genesis should best be understood as referring to an actual 24-hour day lies in the text’s emphasis on “morning and evening.” This phrase indicates a normal 24-hour rotation of the earth.

Moreover, if these days were actually ages and not 24-hour days, that would require animals to have died to create the fossil record. If that were so, it would mean death entered the world before Adam sinned and that contradicts Genesis 2:17: “From the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” It seems clear that death, for humans and animals alike, could only come into the world after Adam sinned.

THE SUPPORT FOR THE LITERAL CREATION STORY

If we're to take the story of creation in the Bible literally, what answers can be given about the seemingly old age of the earth and the fossil record? Should those issues be ignored? Absolutely not! Here are three ideas which help address these issues.

Apparent Age

First, it seems that God created the world with apparent age. Consider the creation of the first man, Adam. When God made him from the dust of the ground (Gen. 2:7), when he was just a few minutes old, he didn’t appear as an infant. Rather, God made him a fully grown man with apparent age. In the same way, when God made the world, He built age into everything that was made. That would even include the light shining from the stars.

Some people assert that since those stars are many light years away, it would have taken much longer for their light to reach the earth, requiring each day to be an age. But if God made them with apparent age, He could also have created their light to shine and reach the earth immediately. So much of the record that points to an old earth can be resolved by recognizing that God has the unique ability to create fully grown trees, fully developed valleys and mountains, and in fact, to present everything with apparent age.

Cataclysm

Second, it also seems that much of the fossil record can be explained by cataclysm. This means that earthly catastrophes can leave remnants that appear to have happened much earlier than they actually did. The eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980 is an example of this.

That volcanic eruption deposited over 1 million trees from the top of the mountain into Spirit Lake below. When those trees became water logged, they submerged to the bottom of the lake. And since the roots took on even more weight than the trunks of the trees, they seemingly planted themselves in the bottom of the lake in vertical fashion. So now, if we were to scuba dive there, we'd see a fossilized forest underwater. Significantly, if we didn’t know that this event happened after 1980, wed think that this forest existed long ages ago and that a lake developed over it over many thousands of years. The same is true with the canyons surrounding Mount St. Helens. In fact, there is a mini-grand canyon with a river in it. It was formed in one day of eruptions in 1980 but if we didn’t know better, wed believe it took millions of years to form.

Of course, the Bible depicts a major catastrophic event, the flood in Noah's day (Gen. 6-8), that could explain much of the alleged evidence for a seemingly much older earth. At that

time, it didn’t just rain, but the Bible says “all the fountains of the great deep burst open, and the floodgates of the sky were opened” (Gen. 7:11). This indicates there were earthquakes and likely volcanic eruptions in addition to tremendous rain.

When people look at the effects of that cataclysm today, they believe it took millions of years to develop, not just the 40 days described in Genesis. Like the eruption of Mount St. Helens, the Noahic Cataclysm could have caused fossilization and canyons of epic proportions much more recently than the superficial examination of them would indicate.

Question Uniformitarianism

A third essential to accepting the creation story is not to assume that uniformitarianism is true. This is a scientific theory that presumes that the earth has always changed in the same exact way. Of course, everything really isn’t uniform.

For example, in the primeval period, according to the biblical record, people lived much longer than they do today (cf. Gen. 5:3-32). Why can’t we believe that of animals as well? Moreover, even scientists recognize that changes of the earth’s temperature and climate have caused changes on the earth in a non-uniform fashion. That’s yet another reason it’s not necessary to believe that creation evolved over millions and millions of years.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Finally, here’s what’s most important: The Bible teaches that there is a Creator who made the world. Moreover, He made humanity, you and I, and He cares for us so much that He wants to have a relationship with us. That’s why the Creator became a man, the God-Man, Jesus of Nazareth, who died for us and rose again. If we trust in Him, we can have an eternal personal relationship with the Creator of the universe.

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BIBLE AND SCIENCE

Many regard religion and science as separate and mutually exclusive realms of human thought. Some claim that developments in science and technology eliminate any need for God or the Bible and that science should replace mythology, religious revelations and philosophy in our communities.

Such thinking represents a misunderstanding of both scientific theory and religious belief. It fails to recognize that biblical thinking led to the rise of modern science. Most of the early pioneers in every branch of natural science were deeply committed Christians who found their motivation in their personal faith. Scientists like the astronomer Johannes Kepler, the botanist John Ray, the chemist Robert Boyle and the physicist Isaac Newton had a personal faith that enabled them to pursue the study of God’s handiwork. So did some of the great nineteenth-century scientists like Joule, Rayleigh, Kelvin, Stokes and Maxwell, whose names appear in standard textbooks on physics and chemistry. C. S. Lewis put it well: “Men became scientific because they expected Law in Nature and they expected Law in Nature because they believed in a Legislator.”

However, the relationship between science and Bible has not only been a story of mutual support but also of mutual criticism. Some Christians have had problems accepting the teachings of science. In the sixteenth century, the church disagreed strongly with Copernicus and Galileo when they found that the sun, not the earth, was the centre of the solar system. Galileo was persecuted by the church and forced to recant his beliefs. In time Christians came to recognize that the problem was not with science, nor with Bible, but with improper interpretations of the Bible, which failed to distinguish between literal and metaphorical language.

Another major crisis in the relationship between science and the Bible arose in the nineteenth century when Charles Darwin proposed the theory of evolution. Many opposed this theory because it seemed to conflict with the biblical account of creation. However, today many Christian scientists accept evolutionary theory as foundational to the modern, scientific study of biology. Yet the debate still rages as to whether opposition to or acceptance of the theory of evolution is based on faulty understanding of science or a questionable interpretation of Scripture.

Today, a significant percentage of university-level scientists still believe in a personal God who answers prayer. Their numbers include the Nobel Prize-winning physicist William Phillips and the director of the Human Genome Project, Francis Collins. Many such scientists acknowledge the grace of God in the discoveries of modern science.

Both the Bible and natural science originate from God. As Paul says in Romans, “since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made” (Rom 1:20).

Where science and the Bible differ is in the way in which knowledge is acquired. Biblical revelation of truth is final and unchanging. What can change is our interpretation and understanding of this revelation.

In science, however, theories are only an approach to truth, not the final truth. Every scientific theory is subject to revision and possible rejection. Doing scientific work itself is an act of faith. It requires a basic assumption that there is a real world outside our mind. No scientific development in the field of cosmology or evolution disproves the existence of God. The scientific approach of biblical archaeology and the study of ancient manuscripts have affirmed much of what we know about the Bible and the events it records.

Knowledge of science and knowledge of the Bible are not mutually exclusive. In fact, each deepens our understanding of the other. As Christians we want the “world” to consider the Bible seriously. But we also need to consider the evidence of science seriously. Science is not an enemy of the Bible.

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The Biblical Doctrine of Creation

The Biblical Doctrine of Creation

McGrath, Alister E., Science and religion: A New introduction, 2^nd Ed. New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.

Brown, P.William. The Seven Pillar of Creation: The Bible, Science and the Ecology of Wonder. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

James Porter Moreland and John Mark Reynolds. Three views on creation and evolution. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010.

Walton, John H. Lost world of genesis one: ancient cosmology and the origins debate. Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2009.

Walton, John H. Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology. Winnona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2011.

Enns, Peter. The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn’t Say about Human Origins. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2012.

1. Christian Doctrine of Creation and Creation Ex Nihilo.

Creation ex nihilo is the Christian doctrine that God created the universe and everything in it out of nothing. He spoke all that exists, besides himself, into existence. For more than two millennia Christians have confessed in all their creeds that God is the “Maker of heaven and earth.” The Nicene Creed specifies that this includes “all things visible and invisible.”

At the heart of the Christian worldview is the idea that God is the creator of all other reality; there is a fundamental distinction between Creator and creation. . . .  The creedal affirmations of Christians are but reaffirmations of the first verse of the Bible, which majestically proclaims: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Thomas V. Morris points out that the biblical doctrine of creation is the key to a distinctively theistic perspective on reality. He writes, “This one statement captures the heart of a theistic world-view. We live in a created universe. For centuries, theists have held that the single most important truth about our world is that it is a created world. And it is no exaggeration to add that it is one of the most important truths about God that he is the creator of this world.”

Creation ex nihilo distinguishes theism from other worldviews that dominated the ancient world.

It was, in fact, the doctrine of creation out of nothing (ex nihilo) that most fundamentally distinguished the Judeo-Christian view of God and the world from the various religions of the ancient Near East and philosophical systems of Classical Greece—all of which assumed that the world had been formed out of eternally preexisting chaotic matter.

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Emerging Science and Technologies

Emerging Science and Technologies

Tegmark, Max. Life 3.0 being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligent. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2017.

Ford, Martin. Rise of the Robots Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future. New York: basic books, 2015.

Frickel, Scott and Kelly Moore, eds. The New Political Sociology of Science Institutions, Networks, and Power. Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1930.

Bostrom, Nick. SUPERINTELLIGENCE Paths, Dangers, Strategies. Oxford: Oxford university Press, 2014.

Lanier, Jaron. You are not a gadgets: A manifesto. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010.

1. An introduction to nanotechnology, Biotechnology and Synthetic Life, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and Neuroscience.

Nanotechnology:

nanotechnology are the study and application of extremely small things and can be used across all the other science fields, such as chemistry, biology, physics, materials science, and engineering. The ideas and concepts behind nanoscience and nanotechnology started with a talk entitled “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom” by physicist Richard Feynman at an American Physical Society meeting at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech) on December 29, 1959, long before the term nanotechnology was used. In his talk, Feynman described a process in which scientists would be able to manipulate and control individual atoms and molecules. Over a decade later, in his explorations of ultraprecision machining, Professor Norio Taniguchi coined the term nanotechnology. It wasn't until 1981, with the development of the scanning tunneling microscope that could "see" individual atoms, that modern nanotechnology.

Nanotechnology involve the ability to see and to control individual atoms and molecules. Everything on Earth is made up of atoms—the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the buildings and houses we live in, and our own bodies. But something as small as an atom is impossible to see with the naked eye. Today's scientists and engineers are finding a wide variety of ways to deliberately make materials at the nanoscale to take advantage of their enhanced properties such as higher strength, lighter weight, increased control of light spectrum, and greater chemical reactivity than their larger-scale counterparts.

Biotechnology:

Biotechnology is technology based on biology - biotechnology harnesses cellular and biomolecular processes to develop technologies and products that help improve our lives and the health of our planet. We have used the biological processes of microorganisms for more than 6,000 years to make useful food products, such as bread and cheese, and to preserve dairy products.

Modern biotechnology provides breakthrough products and technologies to combat debilitating and rare diseases, reduce our environmental footprint, feed the hungry, use less and cleaner energy, and have safer, cleaner and more efficient industrial manufacturing processes.

Currently, there are more than 250 biotechnology health care products and vaccines available to patients, many for previously untreatable diseases. More than 13.3 million farmers around the world use agricultural biotechnology to increase yields, prevent damage from insects and pests and reduce farming's impact on the environment.

Biotechnology are broadly designed to heal the world, to feed the world and to fuel the world.

Synthetic Life:

Synthetic Life/ biology is the attempt to reengineer living organisms as if they were machines for us to tinker with, or even to build them from scratch from the component parts—stems from a decidedly modern construct, a “reverence for life.” In the past, fears about this kind of technological hubris were reserved mostly for proposals to make humans by artificial means—or as the Greeks would have said, by techne.

The first identifiable use of the term "synthetic biology" was Stéphane Leduc a French biologist who sought to contribute to understanding of the chemical and physical mechanisms of life. Craig Venter once said “Life is basically the result of an information process, a software process. Our genetic code is our software, and our cells are dynamically, constantly reading our genetic code.”

Robotics:

Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of engineering and science that includes mechanical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering, computer science, and others. Robotics deals with the design, construction, operation, and use of robots, as well as computer systems for their control, sensory feedback, and information processing. In 1948, Norbert Wiener formulated the principles of cybernetics, the basis of practical robotics.

There are many types of robots; they are used in many different environments and for many different purposes depending upon the potential application and its demand.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Artificial intelligence is a branch of computer science that aims to create intelligent machines. It has become an essential part of the technology industry. Research associated with artificial intelligence is highly technical and specialized. The core problems of artificial intelligence include programming computers for certain traits such as: Knowledge, Reasoning, Problem solving, Perception, Learning, Planning.

Ability to manipulate and move objects Artificial intelligence (AI) is an area of computer science that emphasizes the creation of intelligent machines that work and react like humans. Some of the activities computers with artificial intelligence are designed for include: Speech recognition, Learning, Planning, Problem solving.

Neuroscience:

Neuroscience is a multidisciplinary science that is concerned with the study of the structure and function of the nervous system. It encompasses the evolution, development, cellular and molecular biology, physiology, anatomy and pharmacology of the nervous system, as well as computational, behavioural and cognitive neuroscience. Neuroscience is a new and important field with implications for every aspect of how people move, think, and behave. It also contributes to a better understanding of a wide range of common conditions. A greater understanding of neurological factors can help in developing medications and other strategies to treat and prevent these and many other health issues.

2. Deterministic Chaos

Deterministic chaos, often just called "chaos", refers in the world of dynamics to the generation of random, unpredictable behavior from a simple, but nonlinear rule. The rule has no "noise", randomness, or probabilities built in. Instead, through the rule's repeated application the long-term behavior becomes quite complicated. In this sense, the unpredictability "emerges" over time.

"Deterministic Chaos," suggests a paradox because it connects two notions that are familiar and commonly regarded as incompatible. The first is that of randomness or unpredictability, as in the trajectory of a molecule in a gas or in the voting choice of a particular individual from out of a population. In conventional analyses, randomness was considered more apparent than real, arising from ignorance of the many causes at work. In other words, it was commonly believed that the world is unpredictable because it is complicated. The second notion is that of deterministic motion, as that of a pendulum or a planet, which has been accepted since the time of Isaac Newton as exemplifying the success of science in rendering predictable that which is initially complex.

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Intelligent Design

 Intelligent Design

Del Retzch. Science and it's limit: The Natural Sciences in Christian perspective. Illinois: IVP Academic, 2000.

David Mills, Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism. Ulysses Press, 2006.

Ralte, Rodinmawia. The Interface of Science and Religion: An Introductory Study. New Delhi: Christian World Imprints, 2017.

Intelligent design, according to which all organisms were created by the design of some higher intelligence (God). Intelligent design is a belief or theory that the complex structures of life cannot be explained by natural selection and random mutation as suggested by Darwin but must be explained by some force of willful design. The inner working of the cell its complexity requires a creative intelligent force to have set them in motion. Nature, as most saw it, was deliberately planned, directed, or designed. From that perspective, reasons, ideas, plans, thoughts, patterns, and design would all factor into the causal history, structure, and function of things, and thus any adequate scientific account of nature would have to involve reference to those factors.

Intelligent Design was based on William Paley’s work-Natural Theology (1802) where he argued that the intricate and delicate structure and workings of the watch show that it has been designed by a creative and intelligent watchmaker.

The idea that science can uncover evidence of deliberate design in the cosmos, and especially the idea that supernatural design can figure in truly scientific accounts of natural phenomena, subsequently fell on hard times.

Design: Concept Basics

        1. Artifacts. Activities of human agents typically leave visible traces on the world—traces we are generally able to recognize as resulting from human activity. we recognize that humans had a hand in that machine’s coming into existence. That recognition is based in part upon our knowing some things about nature’s capabilities and our recognition that nature unaided by agent activity would not or could not have produced any such phenomenon. Things that unaided nature could not or would not produce and in whose production finite agents (humans, aliens, whatever) played some role we classify as artifacts.

        2. Design. A design is an intentionally produced (or exemplified) pattern, where a pattern is an abstract structure that resonates, matches or meshes in certain ways with mind, with cognition.

        3. Agent activity. Since design involves the deliberate production of pattern, there is always agent activity somewhere in its history. There would have to be a direct agent activity somewhere, but in this case, it would be directed toward the making of the machine itself—or the machine that made the machine (or perhaps even further back).

        4. Gaps. Whenever humans, aliens, or other finite beings act to produce artifacts (or design), marks of that activity—counter flow marks— are left on the world somewhere or other. Gap-based inferences are foundational to our identification of artifacts as products of agent activity and in the case of human and alien activity are unproblematically legitimate.

 

Recognizing Finite Designedness

 Our recognition of finite designedness (design by finite agents) typically begins with a recognition of artifactuality, itself in turn-based upon recognition of counterflow marks. Sometimes those marks are visible in the end product.

 Of course, there is no guarantee that we can always identify design, always recognize designedness or always recognize artifactuality and counterflow. It is possible that we might confront cases where we were unable to tell whether we were dealing with a genuine artifact or some unusual natural phenomenon.

 

Supernatural Design

The general conceptual structure outlined above would apply fairly well to some instances of design produced by supernatural agents as well. It is in principle possible for a supernatural being to bring about virtually any artifact that we humans (or aliens) can.

Intelligent design (ID) movement exhibits a fair amount of diversity, but the center of gravity of the group is a rejection of methodological naturalism, at least as any sort of norm.

The Intelligent Design (or ID) movement was reinvigorated and began aggressively exercising its new political muscle, striving to bulldoze ID textbooks into public school classrooms. ID teaches that our universe and the life within it are too complex to have arisen without the guiding force of an Intelligent Designer. Although Creation science likewise believed that God was necessary to explain Nature's complexity, ID distinguishes itself from Creation science in one surprising and controversial way: Creation science taught that the Bible was literally true—both Old and New Testaments—whereas ID does not accept the literal truth of the entire Bible. Leaders of the current ID movement do seem to wholeheartedly embrace the New Testament, believing that Jesus literally walked on water, literally filled pigs with demons, literally cast a magic spell on a fig tree, literally rose from the dead, etc. But the voluminous writings of the preachers of ID leave no doubt that they do not believe the Old Testament in the same literal sense, if at all. ID openly accepts contemporary Big Bang cosmology, which, when discussed honestly, bears no similarity whatever to the six-day Creation Story of Adam and Eve in the Book of Genesis. By traditional Christian canon, therefore, the ID movement is a cult, because ID rejects historically accepted Bible teachings and interpretations. Instead, ID preaches modernistic revisionism, contrary to the doctrines of conventional, Bible-based Christianity.

 

Remarks on Intelligent Design

Intelligent Design doesn't attempt to recognize the wellspring of insight (regardless of whether it be God or UFOs or something different), by far most Intelligent Design scholars are theists. They see the appearance of design as the natural world as proof of the presence of God. There are, notwithstanding, a couple of nonbelievers who can't deny the solid proof for configuration yet are not able to recognize a Creator God. They will in general decipher the information as proof that earth was cultivated by a type of expert race of extraterrestrial animals (outsiders). Obviously, their understanding doesn't address the beginning of the outsiders, either, so they are back to the first contention with no dependable answer.

 

Design Theory isn't in every case precisely equivalent to Biblical Creationism. There are different translations of what Intelligent Design alludes to. Scriptural creationists reason that the Genesis record of creation is dependable and right, thus life on Earth was planned by a clever specialist: God. They consider the to be of Intelligent Design as proof from the normal domain that upholds this end. Other Intelligent Design scholars start with the regular domain and arrive at the resolution that life on Earth was planned by an astute specialist, without indicating who that specialist may be.

 

All by itself, Intelligent Design doesn't determine who the Designer or fashioners really are. Accordingly, Intelligent Design is viable with scriptural creationism, however, it's anything but an intrinsically strict position.

 

From the lens of Christian Apologetics

A major theme in the history of Christian apologetics has been the “argument from purpose and design,” also known as the “teleological argument.” When one looks at the unique properties of matter and the earth that allow the existence of human life, the marvels of animal and human physiology, and the many examples in the plant and animal world where the existence of one species is totally dependent upon the interactive existence of another, one is struck by the amount of evidence that can be interpreted as indicating that all of this has been designed by a Great Designer. Many of these arguments in recent years have been stated under the title of “the Anthropic Principle”, which summarizes many of the nuclear, atomic, and gravitational phenomena that appear to be “fine-tuned” to allow the development and/or existence of intelligent life based on carbon.

All such evidence from phenomena in the natural world for the existence of a Great Designer is powerfully consistent for the person who has a personal relationship with God the Creator and Sustainer. The Christian scientist repeatedly marvels at the evidence he sees for the results of God’s design in the properties and development of the universe.

Some Christian apologists have concluded that a science-based on methodological naturalism is inextricably linked to a world-view of naturalism, and that therefore we must rescue ourselves from this situation by introducing the concept of intelligent design as a mechanism in scientific descriptions.

There is no objection to using the concept of intelligent design as a guide in helping to suggest how to construct suitable models of physical the reality, provided that these models are capable of being subjected to test and description in natural categories before they are accepted as scientific.

Intelligent design for the Christian is a general concept underlying all descriptions, scientific and nonscientific, affirming the creative and sustaining activity of God. 

But if the concept of intelligent design is advanced as a substitute for natural categories of description, limiting the specific instances being considered to acts of God’s “intervention” in the “gaps” in our understanding, and considering intelligent design itself as a valid scientific description, critical harm is done to our concepts of the relationship between scientific descriptions and God’s continuing activity in creating and sustaining.

There is the frequent temptation to consider that we can meaningfully decide what God has done and does do, directly on the basis of our understanding of who God is and what God could do. The history of science and Christianity supplies many examples, both in the construction of models of the physical world and in biblical interpretation, where the decision about what God has done has been made incorrectly on the basis of what our presumed knowledge of God would lead us to believe that he has the ability to do. If, in the case of evolution, for example, we wish to answer the question, “How did God achieve his designs in biological development?” we must turn to investigate what it is that God has indeed done, and what form his activity has taken in the actual working out of his creative will. Otherwise we are subject to such classic errors as arguing that the shape of the planets’ orbits must be circular because the circle is God’s perfect shape, or to arguing that sin must be an illusion because God has made us and God is good.

Second, there is the whole area of interaction between such concepts as “natural law” and “God’s intervention” in the world. Many writers speak of “natural law” as though “laws” were self existing elements that God called into existence to rule the physical world. Within the area of science, “natural laws” are human descriptions of God’s regular creative and sustaining activity. Laws do not cause anything to happen; they are descriptive, not prescriptive.

For God to act in a way different from this regular creative and sustaining activity—as, for example, in the doing of a “miracle”—he does not have to “break his laws,” “set aside his laws,” or “intervene in his laws” to accomplish his purpose. Just as we can understand the ordinary “laws” of nature as our descriptions of God’s regular activity, so we can understand a “miracle” as our description of God’s special activity.

Third, there is the concept of “soul” and its implications for reflections on creation and evolution. There is a growing awareness of the difference between the basic biblical concept of soul as “living self,” a concept increasingly supported by growing knowledge of the human being, describing a set of properties of the whole human being, and the “immortal soul,” a concept of classical dualistic models of human nature, which has often been used as an argument against the “natural” theory of evolution. It appears to be much more appropriate, both scientifically and theologically, to think of the soul as describing what a person “is,” rather than what a person “has.”

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