No one can read these early chapters of Genesis and miss the fact that modern cosmology and evolutionary biology make strikingly different claims about how the universe came into being. Here are two considerations to keep in mind as you explore this issue further. First, up until recent times heated scientific debates raged around the question of whether the universe was eternal and infinite (never had a beginning and went on forever) or whether it had a beginning and was finite. Philosophically, those are the only two options. Many scientists were reluctant to acknowledge a beginning to the cosmos because of the theological implications: if there was a start to the universe, no explanation exists for why it started, and what brought it into being. Yet in the last century, the scientific community has come to accept the fact the universe did have a beginning and is not eternal. This of course was never an issue for those who read in the Genesis 1:1 that “In the beginning, God created” space and time. Second, in the field of biology the Intelligent Design movement is pointing out the deficiencies in the prevailing evolutionary explanations for life. Within all life forms are biochemical as well as mechanical features that are “irreducibly complex”–that is to say, they cannot be simplified any further and still function. Therefore because no mechanism exists to explain how they arouse from a more simplified form–but here they are anyway–they must have had this complexity from their inception. The hard facts point to design by intelligence and irreducibly complex systems that no known natural process can account for. Again, for those who read in Genesis that there is a Being who has the power to simply declare things into existence (“Let there be … and it was so”) this scientific discovery comes as no surprise.
The Bible does not discuss the subject of evolution. Rather, its worldview assumes God created the world. The biblical view of creation is not in conflict with science; rather, it is in conflict with any worldview that starts without a creator.
The most important aspect of the continuing discussion is not the process of creation, but the origin of creation. The world is not a product of blind chance and probability; God created it.
The Bible not only tells us that the world was created by God; more important, it tells us who this God is. It reveals God’s personality, his character, and his plan for his creation. It also reveals God’s deepest desire: to relate to and fellowship with the people he created. God took the ultimate step toward fellowship with us through his historic visit to this planet in the person of his Son, Jesus Christ. We can know in a very personal way this God who created the universe.
–Judson Poling & The Life Application Bible
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