As modern science advanced, people believe (?) vaguely that science is truth and the Bible, specially the Moses’ theory of creation, is old and abolished, without having a moment of reflection on the accuracy and the total amount of his scientific knowledge, and without patience and courage to listen attentively to the theory of creation in the Bible. So after Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1851, Huxley was not the only one who praised it as New Genesis. As geology is gathering strength as a new branch of science recently, many scientists are circulating the difference between ‘God’s creations’, ‘the completion in six days’, a chronological table of human development, etc. and those in the theory of geology are not compatible each other; so someone who are in science field but believing in the Bible at the same time reaches to a question if one has scientist’s conscience or not. Rather than laughing off their superficial knowledge, first of all, let us pay attention to, a great authority in paleontology, Mr. Cuvier’s straight talk: “Moses was educated with all the wisdom of Egyptian, and after his age reached proficient manhood, he left the theory of creation that is ceaselessly changing. Recent study in archeology concluded that the order of living creature created is completely in agreement with the order written in Genesis. Some astronomers boast that they have not found God, even though they searched a celestial body for ten years with an astronomical telescope; at the same time, some pedantic scholars among astronomers affirm that anyone who say there is no God must be lunatic. Not all who look will see, and not all who hear will understand. (Matthew 13:14)

This article is not rich spiritually since it is not a study of the chapter one of Genesis; it omits a discussion of the scientific theory of the beginning of the universe or the formation of the earth that despises the inadequacy of the Bible, especially the crux and fault of The Theory of La Place that is believed by many; it will attempt to compare and comment on several questions which are needed to study the chapter one of Genesis and the theories of geology.

1. According to the Bible, the creation of God was completed in six days;
On the first day, the creation of the universe and the separation of light from darkness,
On the second day, the separation of the water above the vault and the water under it,
On the third day, the separation of the earth from sea and the birth of plants on it, so the first half of process of the creation were completed,
On the fourth day, the sun, the moon, and stars appeared in the vault,
On the fifth day, fish and birds appeared,
On the sixth day, Cattle, insects, and wild animals were brought forth first, at the last, man that was the purpose of the creation was created to complete the great work.

The first important difference of the two opposing issues is that Genesis uses a day as a unit of time, saying that it took six days to complete from the creation of the universe to the birth of human beings, while geology separate it into Archeozoic era, Primeval era, Paleozoic era, Mesozoic era, Cenozoic era, according to the order of strata and fossils, and each era might take several hundred thousand years.

2. The second important crux of the prestige of Genesis is that according to Moses, plants appeared first before animals did, but the result of the geological researches proved that it is different from the fact which found animal fossils of shells and corals coexist in the oldest geological stratum that contains the fossils of plants.

However, we have to understand that Genesis was not written as a student took a note in a classroom or a reporter took stenographic notes, when we read Moses’ articles. A revelation or an apocalypse is like sensing things intuitively by watching a scroll of paintings, rather than listening to each word and phrase; so it will help our understanding if we view Moses’ description of six-day creation as he wrote after watching a six-act play. When we tried to feel for wonders of the great creation from the diastrophism of the earth when it changed from one era to the next era, large reptiles and plants, which inhabited in a typical climate of high temperature and humidity from the Late Ordovician Ice Age to the Permian Period, were extinct as it changed to the Triassic Era of the Mesozoic Period and smaller animals in all kinds which were typical of relatively temperate climate of the Mesozoic Era; the ancestors of collective type animals we see today thrived to its height during this era. At the end of the Cretaceous Period of the Mesozoic Era, the surface of the earth changed to its current positions; the East Sea, the Yellow Sea, and the Mediterranean Sea, etc. were subsided; huge mountains such as Mt. Himalaya and Mt. Alps, etc. have risen; volcanoes and geysers vomited smokes oftener than a percolating salt water that is being crystallized in a burning caldron; Japan became a country of islands and India became part of the continent of Asia; besides, the new species of creature entered the stage as those lived during prior era almost disappeared from the stage and the world was dominated by new species which were adapted themselves to new environments; during the end of the Third Period to the beginning of the Fourth Period, men finally appeared for the first time; the last creation was about four to five times older than the formation of the Niagara Fall, about thirty six thousand years ago. Now reflect on the changes of times and the wonders of nature backward from the Cenozoic Era to the Mesozoic Era and from the Paleozoic Era to the Proterozoic Era; even though each era spreads out hundreds of thousands of years, does the concept of 24-hour become an obstacle or injury at all simply because Moses used ‘one day’ instead of ‘era’ to describe a scroll of paints, or one act of a play, which portrayed one era, as long as someone who can guess what a revelation means?

Regarding the order of appearance of plants and animals, I cannot deny that there is a discrepancy in close observation between Genesis and geology; but even at an overview of geology, we cannot but admit that there were three great epochs during which plants appeared; namely, first is the Carboniferous Period when great forests of primitive plants thrived, second is the Mesozoic Era that is the heydays of all sorts of reptiles, and third is the Cenozoic Era when mammals occurred so it is also called the Age of Mammals; as we have overviewed the past, geologists readily agree that plants had thrived before animals did in general.

3. Genesis 1:2 states that the surface of the Earth was covered with water when it was created. It is in agreement with the proofs of geology exactly; the layers of aqueous rock that cover the surface of the earth were formed as sediments deposited by water; so at the beginning, the surface of the earth was covered with water.

4. Genesis 1:3 reads: “God said, ‘Let there be light’, and there was light.” There was light on the first day, but the sun, the moon, and stars were created on the fourth day; so self-styled wise scholars questioned how could there be light even before the sun was created, and ridiculed Moses’ stupidity based on this one verse. However, the research in science gradually advanced to its climax recently that it proved that there can be light independently without the sun; moreover, some scientists refuted other scientists that, like the principle of an aurora, two opposing electricity can simulate dawn, day light, or evening light; I just wonder today how Moses knew that principle at the ancient time!

5. Genesis 1: 9 reads: “God said, ‘Let the waters under heaven be gathered into one place, so that dry land may appear’; and so it was.” One of the clearest discoveries of modern science is that continents were originally submerged under the oceans but have made gradual upheaval to their present formation; it was a good yield.

6. Genesis 1:11-12 recorded that plants flourished in abundance after the continents first appeared due to upheaval from the oceans but before the sun did not appear yet. It appears that there is contradiction with modern science, but the Carboniferous Period eloquently proves the fact that plants were at the height of flourish before animals did and consequently there was light that was needed for the growth of plants at the beginning of the Creation. Moses lived in 15th century B.C. and we live in 20th century A.D.

7. Genesis 1: 14-19 recorded that the sun, the moon, and stars appeared; M. Karl Muller and others proved from a pure scientist’s standpoint that sunlight made inroad and began its influence; namely, it was the period when the relative positions of the sun, the earth, other planets and satellites in the Solar System were lock up at current places for the first time; in one hand, I view this as the preparation made by the Omnipotent so that more superior plants could flourish.

8. Genesis 1:20-23 recorded the countless living creatures appeared on the earth. During the Paleozoic Era, plants propagated in abundance and formed the Carboniferous Period so that we can see coals even today. Likewise, there are plenty animal fossils formed during the Triassic Period, the Jurassic Period, and the Cretaceous Period of the Mesozoic Era so that posterity can compare and contrast the order of the creation in Genesis with that derived from geology; according to Moses’ record, sea fish and reptiles appeared before land-animals did, and fish and birds appeared almost at the same time; the layers of rocks endorses those facts; at which university, did Moses receive his education!?

9. On the last day of the Creation, livestock, insects, and wild animals of all kinds appeared. If we follow the conclusion in geology, these three kinds of animals first appeared during the Tertiary Formation after the Mesozoic Era; namely land animals on the whole and mammals generally inhabited during that period for the first time.

10. The great work of the Creation was completed by the appearance of human beings after domestic animals were created. Because human race, which is the primates of all living things, was created after domestic animals and insects, some people tend to think that the order of creation was inverted; but not only the Bible but also modern science show same orders; namely, human race, that had not appeared till the Pliocene, finally appeared on the surface of the earth at the beginning of the Pleistocene.

11. One affair in the Bible, which is derided by the people with knowledge of modern science, is the dogma that the ancestor of human race began from a couple, Adam and Eve. Therefore, scientists attacked the dogma of ‘the singleness of a human race’ from several angles based on anatomy or physiology, strongly insisting that all human races could not have started from a couple. But, the descendents of the same scientists assert today that all human races are originated from a single organic cell; besides, they have demonstrated that all the animal kingdom, all the vegetable kingdom, together with whole human races originated from a common organic single cell, the organic root of life. Is not the change too great?

12. When we pay attention to the appearance of all sorts of living things while reading chapter one of Genesis, readers would be surprised to find the series of repeated orders of God, “God said, ‘Let the earth.…produce or bring….’”; at the same time, natural resources were always provided, ‘Let the earth produce or bring forth….’, or ‘Let the waters teem with….’, so on; God gave a judgment with a definite statement, regarding the ‘Permanence of Species’ which is the difficult question science can not answer. The mission of science today is to investigate what Moses suggested and to harmonize the two truths of science, ‘a life can be produced only by a life,’ and ‘a life’s capability to produce another life is controlled by the other second cause.’ Since God ordered, providing waters and land as means of production, thereupon the mysterious fact, the growth of life, was manifested between the omnipotence and materials.
13. The writer of Genesis declared God’s Sabbath on the seventh day; namely God’s omnipotence of creation completely ceased. Geology proves based on facts that there are no more ‘New Species’ after the appearance of human beings. How can it be an accident that God entered into a great Sabbath after his administration of Creation was completed as human beings appeared? Thereupon, everything in the nature does not need the appearance of ‘New Species’, and all human, the object of the Creation, who live in the sabbatical era, should work on wholly practicing on ethics and begin to run toward his father’s house in order to find Him and to be in His bosom.

Behind life, there was the activity of omnipotence and means in nature supported it; the manifestation of life and its growth included the beginning, the process, and the Sabbath at the end. Even though geology and other science are not perfect yet, we should be pleased for the fact that they making advance to help understand the revelation Moses received.

(Message: The chapter one of Genesis has been a stumbling block to many prospective believers who think it is contradicting to the Darwin’s ‘The Origin of Species’. So, he compared those two to prove how those two are similar when ‘one day’ in Genesis is replaced with ‘tens of millions of years’.
I wish Genesis does not become a stumbling block to none of my descendent.)