God Created with Functional Maturity, Not “Appearance of Age”
Since age is an inference based on assumptions, there is no deception involved when people make the wrong assumptions about the starting conditions. Indeed, how could God be deceiving when He has told us plainly when He created? Rather, those who deny His word are deceiving themselves.
One striking feature of the record of God’s creative acts in Genesis 1 is that the created things are fully ready to perform their appointed tasks. On Day 3, God created the plants mature, already bearing seeds. Later on, on Days 5 and 6, He created animals as adults ready to multiply, and finally Adam and Eve, likewise as adults, able to speak and multiply. For inanimate objects, on Day 4, God created the sun and stars already shining. All this is creation with functional maturity.
In contrast, there is an errant concept of “creation with apparent age.” One obvious flaw is that age has no appearance! Rather, we infer an age from appearance, after making certain assumptions about processes changing over time, and about the starting conditions.2
I will try to explain further, presenting some case studies from Scripture and from various Christians, including the errant but often-misunderstood ideas of Philip Gosse.
What would be observed?
A hypothetical modern observer who travelled back in time to see Adam and Eve at the end of Day 6 might infer that they were 20-year-old adults, but in reality they were less than a day old. However, they were mature adults. Also, when created, the blood in their arteries was already oxygenated so it could power the cells in the body. Nowadays, the oxygen comes from the air through the lungs into the blood.
But one striking feature, distinguishing them from all their descendants, would be the absence of navels, since the navel (umbilicus or belly button) is the scar where the umbilical cord attached us to our mothers via the placenta. There is also a thinning of the abdominal muscles, which is a potential vulnerability to hernias. Adam and Eve were direct creations of God, so had no navel. A navel in either of them would seem to have no function apart from looking like a history that never happened.
Some have fallaciously claimed that Adam and Eve had navels, because they would have had genes for them to pass on to their offspring. However, it’s not just a matter of having genes for a navel. Genes are also switched on and off in precise sequence during embryonic development. Any genes controlling the navel are expressed during embryo development as tissues accommodate the umbilical cord. So today, our tissues are arranged in this way because of developmental sequence more than genetic coding per se. So since Adam and Eve had no mothers, there would have been no development of the navel.
Such arguments also overlook that Adam and Eve also had genes for embryonic and fetal hemoglobin, deciduous teeth, growth hormone, and controlling the changes in puberty, since these were also passed on to their descendants. But in this founding couple created as fully grown adults, these genes were never expressed either.
Similarly, the trees on Day 3 would be mature trees, and a time-travelling observer might infer that they were hundreds of years old. But if he chopped a tree down, he might be dumbfounded by the lack of growth rings. Growth rings today are a record of mostly seasonal changes in the rate of wood growth, although not always annual. E.g. in dry climates, such as those in which the long-lived bristlecone pines grow, each heavy rainfall can produce a new ring. Also, even trees growing next to each other don’t always have the same growth patterns, so correlations are problematic.3
Similarly, God probably created the sun with a fair amount of helium. A good amount of helium seems like a design feature so that the sun is hot enough. The reason is as follows. A helium nucleus (alpha particle) takes up less room than four hydrogen nuclei (protons). This makes the core contract, and the higher temperature and pressure increases the rate of nuclear fusion, hence energy output. It may also be responsible for the sun’s exceptional stability.4
Editor’s Note:
Extracted and adapted from the author’s landmark 2015 book The Genesis Account: A theological, historical, and scientific commentary on Genesis 1–11.1
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Fear and the Fight to Remember
It happens so fast. A brief thought, a whisper really, and before I know it, I’m all twisted in knots.
My husband mentions that for the next three months he’ll be out of town on business more than he is home. I look at the dates on the calendar and add them up in my head. My eyes zero in on the longest business trip of them all, and I feel a weight press down on me. I grow weary and exhausted as though I’ve just run a mile.
Thoughts nag at me: “It’s so long, and you’ll be so tired managing everything while he’s gone.”
“What if the kids have a hard week while he’s gone? You’ll have no support.”
“What if . . .”
“You can’t . . .”
“It’s too much . . .”
Before I know it, I am overwhelmed, anxious, and fearful of the future.
The Weight of Fear
It’s true—being home with the kids while my husband travels for work is not easy. It’s downright hard. It’s tiring. But those types of thoughts pull me under. They are cement blocks tied to my ankles, dragging me down, deeper and deeper, until I can’t breathe.
I know better. I know my mind’s tendency to take off and run while I stand there stunned. By the time I notice, it’s a lot of work to pull it back from the rabbit trails it followed. But knowing better doesn’t change how easy it is for me to follow this familiar fear pattern. My mind still tends to take off and run while I stand there stunned. By the time I notice I’m off and running, it’s a lot of work to pull it back from the rabbit trails it followed. The pattern is one I have repeated over and over in my life. My fearful responses to changing circumstances are as automatic as breathing. I slip on fear like my old college sweatshirt, the one that is soft from wear and fits like a comfy blanket. In some twisted way, fear is comfortable and normal and familiar.
But I also know that fear is the opposite of trust. It’s not a friend; it’s an enemy, one that keeps me from my Father. Fear lies to me. It tempts me to focus on myself. It hides me in a fog so that I can’t see the reality in front of me. It makes it difficult for me to believe God’s truth—the truth that He is always with me. -
Parents: You Don’t Have to do Anything
No one is forcing us to do anything. Only God has the authority to command us, and we must follow Him. Christ has saved us, not to live for ourselves, but, “that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised” (2 Cor 5:15). So the next time you’re tempted to think that you must do something that violates your conscience to be a good parent, just remember that you don’t have to do anything.
“You have to let your kids watch/do/experience that! It’s so iconic. They’ll totally miss out!”
No. No they won’t. I’m not sure who needs to hear this, but parents, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. There is literally no one mandating the things that your kids must experience to be a full human being. Let me say it even more clearly: There is no movie that your kids must watch in order to function properly in society. There is no music your kids must listen to in order to really thrive. There is no destination that your kids must visit in order to really fit in. No one is forcing you to do any of those things. And while the world is trying to convince you that there are certain things that you must do for your children, I want to talk about the real imperative for all Christian parents.
Christian Parents Are Bound to Obey God
Christian parents have a duty to God, and God alone, in raising their children. “Each of us will give an account of himself to God” (Rom 14:12). God is the One who guides our parenting choices. If we know that we will give an account of our parenting to Him, why would we let the world have any say in what we do? We are commanded to, “bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Eph 6:4).
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The Two Trees, Part 2: The Tree of Life
The tree of life is no more a “magical tree” than the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It is not the fruit that results intrinsically in the life associated with the former not in the death associated with the latter. Instead, both trees are ordinary trees with judicially assigned functions emblematic of flourishing and dying, respectively.
Having suggested in my previous post that there was nothing magical or supernatural about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we turn now to the other tree: the tree of life. Was this tree of a character fundamentally different from the first tree? Let us explore the data.
The text says relatively little about the second tree, only that it was “in the middle of the garden” together with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (2:9). Some suggest that Adam and Eve were not aware of its identity and never “found” it, thus missing their chance to achieve immortal perfection, or that they were barred from this tree until God invited them to eat from it. Standing against these possibilities are the facts that the tree stood prominently in the middle of the garden and that God freely invited Adam to eat from every tree other than the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. No tree would have been more appealing to them, and since they were explicitly permitted to eat from it, they likely did. If this act of eating occurred, however, it apparently had no permanent effect on them.
God’s concern about Adam and Eve eating the fruit of the tree of life becomes active only after Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The words here startle, suggesting that to eat from the tree of life after eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would be disastrous:
The LORD God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.
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