In today’s episode, I start with a couple of stories about the earth when it was young. As we consider the Creation, we must recognize that we don’t know what Jesus Christ’s role was. Did He put on work gloves and plant evolving plants? Did He design animal species and create the first male and female? It appears that Lord was probably more of an Overseer of the natural process of the evolution. One may then ask, “How much does God participate in our own lives?”, but we don’t know that either. There is a saying that, to really understand something, you must go back to its beginning. I submit that understanding God’s role in the Creation may help us to understand His role in our lives as well.
Email: ScottRFrazer@comcast.net
Website: scottrfrazer@gmail.com
S2E10 – God’s Participation in Life – When the Earth was Young
This is the podcast Science and Scriptures, Season 2, Episode 10, or “God’s Participation in Life – When the Earth was Young”
Hello again. This is Scott Frazer, host of the podcast Science and Scriptures. After a long year, the temples of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are reopening, and we are able to return to doing our temple work. The temple endowment has changed slightly, partially to accommodate the requirements brought about by the coronavirus. However, for me, it is exciting to notice the changes in the slides of the temple film. The images depicting the creation process have changed – and better illustrate the scientific understandings of how the earth came to be.
So, in today’s episode, I would like to tell you a few stories of when the earth was young. Most of you may have noticed that temple and Biblical version of the creation are very similar, but not identical. Different events, all of which were needed for a successful Creation, are emphasized in each narration. Let me point out to you certain aspects of the creation of the earth that might add more to your understanding of the Creation and how it was manifested.
Billions of years ago, there was a much larger sun sitting in the Universe where our own familiar Sol, or sun, sits today. That star had so much mass and energy that it eventually “went supernova” and exploded. As you might guess, it was a huge explosion, the largest our little section of the galaxy had seen for billions of years. However, enough hydrogen from the middle of our supernova did not get blown away too far. Gravity pulled that hydrogen back into another large mass of gas, which eventually reignited to make our present-day sun. Thus our sun is a second-generation or even third generation star.
Most of the heavier elements created by the sun and its supernova explosion were shot out into space, some to the very edges of our Solar System. Now you might picture this explosion as being equal in all directions, but that is not accurate. The exploding sun was rotating, and the physics of such explosions concentrate the debris into a single plane that extends out from the equator of that supernova. Over millions of years, gravity pulled the material that was not in the correct plane back into alignment. These physics explain why the orbits of all the planets approximately lie on a single plane. The single-plane debris field was huge - and crowded. Four “Rocky” planets gradually formed from the heavier debris. Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars gathered the debris floating in their orbits through gravity. Consequently, there was lots of meteorite activity in those early days. Though most stayed, large amounts of hydrogen and helium gases was flung even further out into the solar system than the rocky matter. Those gases eventually formed into the gas giants Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune.
As Earth formed from some of the larger fragments of iron, nickel, silica and other solid elements, it established its own gravity field. As mentioned, that gravity pulled in other fragments from the supernova and the Earth grew larger. When those fragments hit the earth, they were descending quickly, bringing lots of kinetic energy with them. The energy released from the resulting meteorite strikes imparted extra heat to the planet’s surface. But the earth was already quite hot. It was still cooling from the supernova. There was no atmosphere to reduce the intensity of the Sun, and the increasing gravity of our planet created its own heat as well. This all resulted in a young Earth that was essentially a sphere of molten lava. Because it was a thick liquid, gravity could do what it does best – pull everything into the center. Consequently, our young earth was almost a perfect sphere. It was featureless – no mountains or valleys, no oceans or lakes. But Earth still had plenty of water. You might picture our planet as a perfect sphere, covered by a very shallow ocean.
After a few million orbits around its new sun, the earth had vacuumed up all the debris within reach of its gravity. The meteorite bombardment subsided – and the earth began to cool. Iron and Nickel settled into the center of the planet to form our earth’s core. A new crust, made up of silica and a host of other inorganic elements, gradually formed on top of that core.
The cooled Earth’s crust hardened, but it still floated on the surface of a underground sea of molten lava. This made for an unstable foundation, and the crust eventually broke into pieces. Today we call those pieces “continental plates” and there is a field called Plate Tectonics that study their movements. A few plates are so large that present-day continents can fit onto one. Others are smaller. But those plates continued to move and occasionally they collided with each other. There is a lot of momentum behind shifting continental plates, so their collisions were huge! With each collision, the edge of one plate was shoved on top of the lower plate. As its momentum pushed the edge of the plate further into the air – viola’, a mountain range formed. The lower plate sunk under the weight of the upper plate – and viola’, large valleys appeared. Now, when it rained, the water had someplace to go. Great rivers and small streams formed as the water followed the path of least resistance from mountains to low areas. Lakes and oceans formed at the lowest points of the resulting landscape.
From Genesis chapter 1, we read,
“And God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the Dry Land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas:”
So, to change an ocean-covered planet into one with both dry land and Seas, and it appears that God probably used shifting continental plates to do it.
But let’s get back to our discussion of our cooling planet. As Earth cooled, its atmosphere was formed mainly from gases that had spewed out of volcanoes, such as hydrogen sulfide, methane, and carbon dioxide. The methane formed droplets in the air, which helped shroud the Earth in a global haze. There was no oxygen yet, but there was water.
What do you get when you have a hot planet and lots of water? You get evaporation of that water. The water ascended into the developing atmosphere and, as it does today, reached heights where it cooled and condensed. For millennia, the earth’s surface remained too hot for water to rain and stay on the surface very long. Instead, we had a steamy atmosphere of churning, never-ending clouds. After about half a billion years, our planet’s surface reached a ground temperature that was low enough to allow liquid water to gather. Rain continued to fall - lots and lots of rain. Rainwater gathered into oceans, seas and lakes. It continued to rain and the earth continued to cool.
Finally, the earth cooled enough that water evaporation slowed down. Gradually, the skies cleared, and the constant rain stopped. When the clouds were gone, the sun, the moon and the stars appeared. These heavenly bodies had already been in the heavens for millions of years of course. But the rainclouds had finally moved out of the way for them to be seen from Earth. As we read in Genesis,
“And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years. And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth; and it was so.”
With the clouds out of the way, the sun could now rule the day and the moon could rule the night. Without the clouds in the way, the stars were also caused to appear.
The earth now had dry land. It had lakes, rivers, and streams to provide water in dry seasons. The appearance of more sunshine brought energy to the earth’s surface. Plants that needed this energy to survive started to evolve. About 2.7 billion years ago, bluish-green microscopic organisms called cyanobacteria evolved. They flourished in the warm, high carbon-dioxide environment of Earth’s oceans. Eventually, true algae evolved. Both were photosynthetic. Plants are powered by photosynthesis, a process that consumes sunshine and carbon dioxide to form sugar and a by-product called oxygen. Over the next few million years, the oxygen content of the earth’s atmosphere rose.
Over time, plants covered came to cover nearly all of the globe. Seaweed covered the ocean bottoms. Moss formed on rocks. Algae covered wet regions of land, ponds, and lakes. Grasslands were eventually covered with… grasses. Grasses were one of the first species of true plants to evolve. Vegetables and other herbs followed. One of the last species of plants to develop was the deciduous tree, which includes fruit trees. This is the same order as that given in Genesis 1:11.
“And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.”
Trees were an interesting development. Plants compete with one another, trying to position themselves where they can receive more sunlight. Those species that were successful thrived; species which couldn’t compete became extinct. Trees evolved because of the competition for sunlight. They evolved the ability to make molecules of cellulose, hemicelluloses, and lignin. These components form wood fiber, which adds considerable strength to the trunk and branches of plants. Trees could now grow larger and taller, and access sunlight far better than their shorter cousin plants. Vast forests formed throughout the world. This was highly fortunate… or planned, since mankind would eventually need that wood to make tools and build homes.
When the atmosphere had sufficient oxygen for animal life, animals began to evolve. Besides oxygen, plants make sugar in their leaves. The first animals to evolve were plant-eaters. The sugar in plants was necessary for them to have something to eat.
So, animals began to evolve. Life began in the lakes and oceans. Anaerobic bacteria became Aerobic bacteria, which could breathe the newly generated oxygen. Small fish, and then larger fish filled the oceans.
Thus we read in Genesis 1; Verse 20-21 that God first commanded the waters to bring forth animal life.
“And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.” And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
God now commanded the earth to bring forth living creatures. Four verses after He commanded the waters to bring forth life, it was the earth’s turn. In Genesis 1:24, we read,
“And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.”
Certain sea creatures started to spend time on dry land, probably in between the low tides and high tides of the ocean. Eventually, these sea creatures evolved to stay on land full time.Mammals evolved to thrive in their chosen niches, from mountain goats living on the highest peaks, to elephants living on the savannas of Africa.
I don’t suppose we should be surprised that the Genesis version of the Creation so closely follows the evolutionary narrative. Genesis gives us a poetic description of the Creation. We often don’t recognize it for its accuracy, a characteristic that is somewhat surprising considering Genesis was written so very long ago.
As the scientific version of the Creation was discovered, many evolutionists declared that God was now unnecessary. They proclaimed that God didn’t cause the dry land to appear from the water - continental plates had done that. They explained that God didn’t cause the sun and moon to appear in the heavens – the cooling of the earth did that. God wasn’t needed to cause bacteria, plants, and animals to appear on the earth – evolution did that. This accusation caused many religiously faithful people to bristle. “No”, they responded angrily, “it was God who made the Earth and filled it with life!” You might see how such disagreements fueled the angry debates that occurred for decades after Charles Darwin published his famous book on evolution in 1859.
As in all historical evaluations, we need to differentiate between what we know from what we don’t know. Faithful members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believe that Jesus Christ, under the direction of Heavenly Father, created the Earth. But after receiving instruction from the Father to go down to Earth to carry out the next step in the Creation, what did Jesus Christ actually do when He got here? Did He put on His work gloves and dig holes for the newest set of evolving plants?Did He design the newest animal to evolve and use his power to create the first male and female bodies of that species? Did He oversee armies of angels who were planting seedlings and creating animal bodies? Or… did He check on the progress of the evolution of the planet and its life, make corrections as necessary, and let that evolution continue naturally?
At this point, the religious faithful need to realize that… we just don’t know the answer to these questions. Believers can speculate, but be warned that such speculation is to the detriment to our defense of God and religion.
Richard Dawkins is probably the most famous atheist author of all time. His books were pro-evolution and anti-God. In his book The God Delusion, written in 2006, Dawkins accuses Creationists of creating their own “God of the Gaps”. This term condemns the common practice of Creationists to continuously identify gaps in the scientific explanations of evolution as points where God used His power. This term “God of the Gaps” actually goes back to the later 1800s. Even then, the religious faithful were desperate to defend God’s role in the Creation. However, the problem with identifying gaps in science is that they were eventually filled in by further scientific studies. The events that creationists had once identified as points of God’s active involvement were proven to have been accomplished by natural means. For example, for many years anthropologists sought for the “missing link” between the evolution of chimpanzees and mankind. Creationists insisted that Adam and Eve were created by God’s power, not through natural means or evolution. But the links were eventually found, and the case for God’s existence was weakened in the eyes of many people.
The efforts by creationists to speculate on what God did in the Creation has led to further criticism. For example, the doctrine that God individually created all species of animals led to problems. Fossil evidence shows that a whale species now known as Leviathan melvillei, which lived in our planet’s oceans roughly 12 to 13 million years ago, became extinct long ago. It disappeared from our oceans long before mankind arrived. Why, evolutionists asked, did God go to the trouble of creating a species of whale just to have it go extinct? It made no sense. By speculating on the role God took in the Creation, the religious faithful created valid points of criticism against the Bible. In summary, those who believe in God need to admit that we don’t know what role God took in the Creation. Further speculation will only lead to further mocking by non-believers.
However, taking the other side now, atheistic anthropologists, scientists, and authors need to admit that they don’t know how God was involved in the Creation either. We have but one Creation to study. No one can answer the question “What would evolution have looked like if there was no God?” because we don’t know His role. No one can identify if or how God used His power to initiate, direct, or otherwise adjust the evolution of the planet or its life.
The normal atheist response to this question is that God became unnecessary, because natural scientific evolution can create and bring life to a planet. However, we don’t really know this to be true. Atheistic evolutionists start with their assumption that God does not exist, so they conclude that random chance and evolution must have created our life-filled world. If their assumption is wrong, and I believe it is, then their conclusion is wrong as well.
As an aside here, because I am on a roll, the question that weakens the atheist argument for a godless Creation is “Why?” A To-Do list to create a life-filled planet would include millions of steps. The steps required just to create a single cell is immensely long. For example, there are numerous organic reactions needed for a simple cell to obtain food, shuttle it to the right location in the cell for digestion, then break it down with enzymes. There are several more very specific organic reactions needed for the cell to convert the resulting glucose to usable cell energy.
Why did all of these reactions evolve the way they needed to evolve? What drove the progression of the millions of needed evolutionary steps which led to earth, plants, animals, and the incredible bodies in which our spirits reside during our mortal probation? Why did each step fall exactly our way, continuing to develop additional thousands of new organic reactions needed for a simple cell to function? The only answer the pure evolutionists can give is that each step was random – and we were just incredibly lucky that things went the way they did. I can’t accept that - not for a moment. If random chance was that generous, there would be a lot more winners in Las Vegas.
So, both sides of the Creation argument – the religiously faithful and atheist evolutionists – need to accept the fact that we don’t know what God’s role was in the Creation. It’s a question I look forward to having answered in the next life. For now…for me personally… I don’t believe God planted seedlings or designed and built the bodies of animal species. I picture the Lord as being, first, an Overseer of the natural process of the evolution of our planet and its life. Since I don’t believe in random luck, I believe that He was involved in directing the most important of those processes and tweaked them as needed to keep them headed in the right direction. The design and evolution of mankind were especially important and, as we read in Genesis, probably required more of His attention. There were requirements and a timeline in the creation of an earth that was designed for this phase of our eternal progression. The Lord made sure those requirements were met. But don’t ask me for more details about the Lord’s role in the creation process. First, I don’t know those details and, secondly, I don’t want to continue the outdated tradition of creating a “God of the Gaps”. But I can tell you that my understanding of the Creation requires both evolution and God.It simply doesn’t work any other way in my head. So, if I ever decided to leave science or the church, I would have to work out a whole new explanation. I cannot even imagine how I might start making such a change.
Building life is a delicate and tricky process. Despite efforts to do so, scientists have yet to create life in a carefully controlled lab environment. In the movie Jurassic Park, the actor Jeff Goldblum portrays a scientist visiting an island of dinosaurs. At one point, he explains to the director of the Park that, despite the obstacles they may put in place to oppose it, “Life finds a way.” Sorry, Mr. Goldblum, but life has a LOT of requirements before it can “find a way”. Life hasn’t “found a way” on any other planet or moon in the solar system. We have tried to contact civilizations on other planets to no avail. Life doesn’t appear to “find a way” or “just happen”. To think we could chalk up life to random luck is rather outlandish when you really think about it.
Today, we still debate as to how much involvement God has in our lives. How much is God involved in our personal lives, or in our church, or in our planetary affairs? We don’t really know the answer to that question either. Some people believe God is with them every moment. Agnostics believe God exists but has no contact with His children. A person’s belief about how much God interacts with him seems to be a very personal opinion. But it is a balance. Just like it can be proven that the Creation was mostly a natural process, it can be proven that most of your day is made up of very temporal events. There are many balances in life. In both the Creation and His interaction with His children today, God must cover his tracks. The Earth must remain a planet of faith. So, we will not know exactly how much God interacts with us until our lives here are over.
So, that is all I have for you today. I thank you for listening to this podcast. There is a saying that, to really understand something, you must go back to its beginning. I think that is true for the earth and our reasons for being here, so discussions about the Creation can lead to understandings of our present-day challenges.May you come to understand our beginnings and may that understanding strengthen your faith. As always, if you think this episode might help a friend or family member to understand God’s role in the Creation or our lives, please share it with them. And if you haven’t subscribed to my podcast, please do – it will help others find the podcast. And send me email at scottrfrazer@gmail.com with any suggestions for discussion topics. This is Scott Frazer from the podcast Science and Scriptures. Take care and have a good week.