I sent an email to the Affiliation of Christian Geologists (Ask a Geologist section), asking them the following questions:

1. How does the discovery of dinosaur bones millions of years old, fit in with the biblical account of the origins of life, in Genesis? Does it conflict?

2. Does the existence of fossils millions of years old, and the evolutionary account of humans descending from ape like creatures, undermine the biblical account of humans descending from Adam and Eve?

3. I've heard of Flood legends than precede the biblical account of Noah's Ark, and with different people involved - does this conflict with/undermine the biblical account?

I received the following reply (they sent a second email just in case I didn't received the first one - I received both, but it was considerate of them to verify it with a second email).

My friend David Campbell sent out a reply to you today. He wrote to say that the message may not have been delivered to you. So, I will try again. Sorry if this is a repeat message. Thank you for your inquiry to the ACG.

In Christ,

Stephen O. Moshier, Ph.D.

President, Affiliation of Christian Geologists

Associate Professor of Geology, Wheaton College

Great are the works of the Lord: They are studied by all who delight in them. Psalm 111:2

FROM David Campbell:

Thanks for asking. I am a palaeontologist, currently teaching biology at a small school in Maryland and active in the local PCA church.  Here are my thoughts.

1. and 2. both include the question of whether an old earth is compatible with the Genesis account. Certain aspects of the Biblical text indicate that not all of history is covered. For example, duplicate genealogies often add or omit people, showing that the point is connection rather than an exhaustive ancestor-descendant list. Additionally, just as in English, day is used flexibly in Hebrew.   For example, Leviticus 25:8 uses "day" to refer to the 49 years between Jubilees.  Although some early church fathers speculated that the "days" of Genesis 1-2 probably were not 24 hour days (instead, favouring instantaneous creation), the issue of an old earth did not particularly come up until the late 1700's, with the beginnings of modern scientific study of the earth. It soon became clear that the geological evidence favoured a very old earth, although exact ages remained uncertain until the development of radiometric dating during this century.

Probably the most popular way of reconciling this geological evidence with the account in Genesis was the gap view, in which Gen. 1:2a is translated "and the earth BECAME formless and void...". In other words, there is a gap between 1:1 and 1:2, during which most of geologic and cosmological history took place, followed by a catastrophe and re-creation. This re-creation is what the rest of Gen. 1 and Gen. 2 describe. This view was quite popular in the 1800's and the first half of this century and retains some popularity today. Its advantage is in treating Genesis 1-2 as largely historical in style while allowing plenty of time for geology and cosmology. However, the justification for became in 1:2a is weak, and the geological and biological evidence does not indicate a recent catastrophe.

Another possibility is a day-age type of approach. In this, the days of Genesis 1 are considered to be long intervals of time, possibly even partly overlapping. For example, according to the Big Bang theory, the universe was glowing hot for the first 100,000 years or so. (This glow can be observed by radio telescopes.) After that point, light and darkness were separate. This looks like a good match with Gen. 1:4. It is not quite as literal as the gap approach but keeps the sequence of events as a chronology while allowing for lots of time. Its scientific weakness is that some of the matches are strained. For example, the sun, moon, and stars to be on day 4 but plants on day 3 is generally explained as a change in the transparency of the earth's atmosphere, so that a human observer would first have been able to see the sun after the appearance of plants. As Genesis 1-2 is very human-centered in its focus, the idea of "how things would have looked to a human observer on earth" is not unreasonable, however. A related idea is that the days of Genesis 1 refer to God's proclamation of what He was going to create and not to the sequence of physical events.

Finally, it is possible that the "days" of Genesis 1-2 have no chronological intent at all. Obviously, this view has no conflict with scientific evidence about the age or sequence of events, because it claims that Moses had no intention of addressing those issues in the first place. One line of evidence used to support this view is the pattern of Genesis 1:2-31. Verse 2 presents a problem: formless and void. Day 1 sees form imposed on the heavens, day 2 on the sea and sky, day 3 on the land. Day 4 fills the heavens, day 5 fills the sea and sky, day 6 fills the land. In each case, it works progressively closer to us. Such a pattern gives an alternate explanation for why the words day, evening and morning, etc. would be used - it is an extended metaphor. Seven is highly symbolic of completion. Intervals of seven days, seven weeks, seven years, and seven sevens of years are significant, the menorah has seven branches and seven appears regularly in Revelation.

Requiring days in Gen. 1-2 to be 24 hour seems to run into problems, addressed by any of the above approaches. In particular, 2:4 refers to "the day" that seems to encompass events form several days in ch. 1. Conversely, the appeal in Hebrews to enter into God's rest suggests that day 7 is continuing to the present. All of these options assume that the Biblical account is authoritative but differ as to its proper interpretation. Of course, anyone who does not consider the Bible to be infallible will not worry about apparent conflicts with science, but this attitude has serious theological problems.

1. Apart from the age of the earth, two questions may be specifically associated with dinosaurs.

Why does the Bible not say anything about dinosaurs? The Bible does not say anything about a lot of topics. Its purpose is to teach us what we need to know about God and how we need to respond to Him. If you want to find out about dinosaurs, you can go dig up fossil bones. If you want to find out about God, one of the most important things to know is that there are no bones to dig up, because Jesus rose from the dead. To know about God, we need revelation from Him, whereas we can study creation. Some young-earth advocates claim that passages such as Job 40:15-41:34 are about dinosaurs. However, modern animals such as crocodiles or hippopotamus seem more likely, in addition to the geologic evidence for about 65 million years between the last dinosaurs and Job. However, it is also possible that the discovery of fossil dinosaur bones could have given early people ideas about giant animals. Additionally, some of the passages show similarities to mythical monsters of the surrounding cultures. These may thus be ancient equivalents of the Veggie Tales song 'God is bigger than the boogie man'. [Veggie Tales is a popular Christian cartoon series, shown in America - Baptists Surfer Ed]  Even the mightiest monsters dreamed up by anyone are no match for God.

How is animal death before the fall compatible with Genesis 1-3 and pre-Flood predators with 9:3-5? It should be noted that this does not directly connect with the issue of the age of the earth. Many theologians had concluded that animal death occurred before the fall long before there was any geological evidence. It is not necessary for animals to multiply and be fruitful if there is no loss. Also, for the warning "You shall surely die" to be meaningful, Adam and Eve needed some concept of death. 9:3-5 focuses on people rather than animals, and even in the case of people, killing animals was clearly acceptable before 9:3-5 as both Abel and Noah sacrifice them, and clean animals were known to Noah before the Flood. Unclean animals can be used as domestic animals, but may not be eaten. Several possible explanations also exist for how animal death is compatible with everything being declared good in Genesis 1. First, although creation was good, there was work for man to do in subduing it. It was not "very good" before day 6. Even "very good" pales in comparison to heaven, so it seems as though creation would have been temporary even without the Fall. Secondly, it is not clear that the death of animals is a moral evil. It it wrong for humans to abuse them, but there is no evidence that a Tyrannosaurus was sinning when it bit a live Edmondosaurus, for example. Is a hurricane bad? It has no moral responsibility. Its effects may be good or bad, depending to a large extent on whether we have acted responsibly and helped each other prepare or if we have acted selfishly and carelessly. It is also possible that animal death prior to Genesis 3 is a reflection of sin. On the one hand, Satan was fallen before we were, and so could have tried to meddle with creation. This is more or less the scenario envisioned in C.S. Lewis' space trilogy and Tolkien's Silmarillion (which also has a proclamation-type scenario, though not called days). On the other hand, spiritual cause and effect is not strictly chronological. Jesus' sacrifice saved Abraham about 2000 years after he died, for example. Thus, our fall could make the earth fallen in some way.

2. Evolution, as a natural process, is just as much under God's control as the rest of nature. Thus, saying that something evolved does not contradict the statement that God made it. The key distinction of man from the rest of creation is his being made in the image of God. As God does not have a physical nature, this must refer primarily to our spiritual nature. Thus, I do not see a problem with assuming that God created our physical bodies using evolutionary processes and then at the right time endowed two with a soul. The fossil and genetic evidence does suggest that the common ancestor of all modern humans lived at least hundreds of thousands, or more likely millions, of years ago. Also, traces of intelligent activity go back that far, e.g. making complex stone tools, living in cold climates that would require clothing, or having the part of the brain now associated with speech well-developed. Larger infant brain size and accompanying likely difficulty in childbirth goes back at least a couple of million years. Thus, if Adam and Eve are the physical ancestors of all later humans, then they lived a long time ago. Conversely, if they are considered as representatives chosen by God out of an existing population, they could have lived later. Just as we are not physical descendants of Christ, despite His role as the second Adam, physical descent from the first is not so important as the spiritual descent.

3. If Noah is the ancestor of all modern people, then all of them would have originated with some knowledge of the Flood. Thus, it is not surprising to find memories of it in many cultures. These would also be affected by their own experiences. For example, many flood stories feature the tallest local mountain. Additionally, they are generally obviously pagan. Thus, it is possible that the Biblical account is a divinely corrected version of a widely-known story. On the other hand, many of the other flood stories may simply be based on memories of local floods and only have coincidental similarities.

I hope this helps!

In Christ,

Dr. David Campbell

If you want to contact Dr. David Campbell for further clarification, you can try the following email addresses:

bivalve@mail.davidson.alumlink.com is supposed to be a permanent address, whereas dcampbell@osprey.smcm.edu may not last long.