The first reference to the planet Earth describes its surface as covered with water which was obscured from the light of celestial objects.' If one were to assume that at each stage of creation the planet was in a "natural" condition, i.e., the condition one would expect if the work of creation had not gone further, he would conclude that this water was in strong tidal motion and probably also driven by severe winds.' The Hebrew wording of Genesis 1:2 may be taken to suggest, or at least allow, this supposition.'
On the first day of Creation Week the power of God in a supernatural (i.e., extraordinary) manner caused light to reach one side of the water-covered surface of the globe. Inspiration does not reveal whether this light originated from the sun or from God's presence, but presumably it came from the sun, since it marked off a regular twenty-four-hour day of the weekly cycle. The change that allowed light to reach the surface of the water may well have involved an original creation of elementary matter that was not previously in the atmosphere during the preceding dark portion of the day.
The creative work of the second day evidently produced an atmosphere that was suited to the plant and animal life to follow. The lacking atmospheric constituents would need to have been produced by direct creation of elementary matter, or else abstracted from the solid material in the earth and the water covering it. The considerations to follow indicate the former possibility to be the more acceptable.
God's superiority over matter and natural law is clearly established in the events of the third day of Creation Week. On this day in less than twenty-four hours (probably in an instant) dry land appears over most of the globe, and a worldwide raging ocean becomes streams, lakes, and small seas dispersed over the landscape. At the end of this transformation the planet is left in a stable state to provide man for millenniums to come a home unthreatened by earthquakes, tidal waves, and vulcanism. The nature of this accomplishment will be appreciated when one considers the seismic and volcanic activity that shows that the earth has not yet reached a stable state following the changes associated with the Flood.
Genesis 1:9 shows that either (1) God can take the incomprehensible number of atoms in the earth's crust and in a moment rearrange them into a different pattern which thereafter will be stable in accord with natural (normal) physical laws, or (2) God can take a mass of matter the size of the earth's crust and in a moment cause to disappear those atoms that do not suit His purposes, replacing them with and/or adding to them the number and types of atoms that in each position do suit His purposes. Alternative (2) is equivalent to (1) and includes a capacity for creating original elementary matter, which is required by other aspects of the creation record.
On the third day the earth was covered with plant life ranging from submicroscopic viruses through soil bacteria to the mighty giants of the forest. The formation of a single mature tree in full fruit would have been an incomprehensible achievement. NVith the creation of a single tree there is brought into existence a host of previously nonexistent organic molecules; and, furthermore, these molecules are organized into the highly complex cellular structure of the tree. The number of distinct kinds of organic molecules in a tree is unknown, but one is safe in saying that it exceeds by manyf old the number of different kinds of atoms that existed in the earth before organic matter was created.' The number of distinct kinds of organic molecules in all the vegetable life of the newly created world is beyond estimate with our present limited knowledge.
In Creating Elementary Atoms God Not Dependent Upon Pre-existing Matter
The creation of a plant involves not only the formation of the plant itself but also the creation of the soil conditions in which that plant will thrive. The necessary minerals, organic material, and bacterial life must be placed in the soil at the location of the plant. In the formation of a plant and its proper soil conditions, did God use elementary atoms that He had previously created, pulling the necessary material together from various parts of the earth, or did He make an original creation of elementary matter as required for each plant? In view of the capabilities demanded for creation according to the Genesis account, the first proposal is rather crude. It would seem that a creator having the capacity to bring into existence the comparatively simple elementary matter would produce it "fresh," as and where needed throughout the creation process. Thus God would not be dependent upon pre-existing matter at any step in the creation of the earth.6
For the abilities displayed in bringing the earth's plant life into existence it would appear to be an exceedingly simple thing to produce the inorganic atoms in whatever distributions, relative abundances, or isotopic compositions they may be found. The God who can speak into existence thousands on thousands of square miles of mature forest certainly can in a moment bring into existence rocks and soils having any radioactive "age" that might suit His purposes.
It seems appropriate to think that when the birds were created they came into being acting as they would had they existed for a considerable time. Thus an observer of Creation Week might be looking up into a lifeless sky to suddenly see an eagle soaring overhead, uttering its piercing cry (and possibly with a nest of eaglets in a tall tree on a nearby peak!). In bringing that eagle into existence did God scoop up the necessary elementary atoms from places in the earth where they could be found and assemble them in the air into the infinitely more complex organic compounds and cellular structure of the adult bird? It is more satisfactory to think that there was an original, on-the-spot formation of the elementary matter in each animal and vegetable creation.
But the reader may say, "All this is rather interesting speculation; but of what use is it? Is there any inspired witness that God actually produced elementary matter after the first day of Creation Week?" The answer is Yes. There certainly were not enough electrons, protons, and neutrons in Adam's rib to form an adult female body.' Obviously there was a production of original elementary matter in the creation of Eve.
The statement that Adam was made of the dust of the ground does not necessarily imply that the matter in Adam's body was drawn from the earth and existed on the first day of Creation Week. With Moses' vocabulary God could not have told him how Adam was made of the basic elements in our periodic table. In what better way could He have expressed this truth than by saying Adam's body was formed from the dust of the ground?
Vast Quantities of Elementary Matter Required in Creation
The preceding discussion has aimed to establish that vast quantities of elementary matter were brought into existence throughout the first six days of Creation Week. Many will ask, "Was all the elementary matter now in the earth formed during Creation Week?" To find a worthy answer to this question one must adopt the principle that "the book of nature and the written word shed light upon each other." Scientists lacking a knowledge of (or faith in) the written Word have drawn some unsound conclusions about the material world. Throughout history well-meaning religious people have, through an insufficient knowledge of the facts of nature, sometimes also taken untenable positions.
The fourth commandment states that during Creation Week God made "heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is."" We today do not point to a cow and insist that God made that very cow by direct creation. The book of nature—our experience and observation—testifies that this cow came about in a natural manner from her parents. This light from the book of nature plainly explains the meaning of the fourth commandment to be that during Creation Week God made the original animals from which every subsequent animal has descended.
The statement "all that in them is" either simply refers to the plant and animal life in the air, on the land, and in the water or else it refers to this plant and animal life plus the elementary matter of the earth. If it also refers to elementary matter, the some one-thousand tons of meteoric dust that falls on the earth each day" must have been brought into existence during the Genesis Creation Week. Since this material was not part of the earth at that time, one may question that the Genesis account was intended to include it—except under the general reference to the stars," which assures the reader that stars, meteors, and all things in the universe have their origin in God. As meteoric material is a part of our solar system," one may take the position that our entire solar system was brought into existence along with Earth, in order to make the statement under discussion apply to elementary matter.
There are at least two processes by which the earth is continually acquiring elementary matter from outside the solar system. One of these is collision with interstellar matter as the solar system moves through space. It is well established that the space between solar systems, and even between galaxies, is not a perfect vacuum but contains small amounts of gases and dust."
The other process is the bombardment of Earth by cosmic radiation. The primary cosmic radiation is high energy atomic nuclei that strike the earth from all directions in space. Atoms of hydrogen, helium, and more complex elements, which originated in remote regions of the Milky Way, are in this way being continually added to the earth.'
It is difficult, and to many seems utterly unreasonable, to take the position that the entire Milky Way, a galaxy with a diameter in the order of 100,000 light-years, was created together with our earth, and none of the inspired comments on Creation Week suggest that one should do so. The conclusion appears to be that the Genesis account is a simple outline of the creative work done in shaping the earth and fitting it with organic life so that it could become a member of the family of inhabited worlds; that this account deals only with aspects of the creation that could have been seen by the unaided eye of an observer on the surface of the planet. One should not attempt to read too much into the words found in the inspired statements concerning creation, for the original Bible writers and the translators through whom their messages come to us did not possess the vocabulary with which to record Scripture so that it would answer all the questions that modern atomic and nuclear knowledge suggest regarding the formation and the history of matter.
Radioactive Age Determinations Uncertain
The radioactive age given for a specimen expresses both its present isotopic composition and some assumptions concerning its physical history. The present isotopic composition may be determined precisely, but the assumptions that must be made concerning the radioisotope distribution at the formation of the elementary matter in the specimen and concerning its subsequent thermal, chemical, and radiation history make uncertain the relation between the specimen's radioactive age and its age in terms of our solar years.
To illustrate the uncertainties concerning radioactive age determinations, let us suppose we had a specimen of uranium ore that we were certain had since its original creation never been subjected to either temperatures which would evaporate a portion of some of the more volatile radioactive elements or radiation which would change its isotopic composition. Laboratory analysis could not determine whether the present isotope distribution in that specimen indicated God's will for it 6 thousand, 6 million, or 6 billion years ago. Not until we have opportunity for open communion with angels and the inhabitants of unfallen worlds can we be certain of a solar year interpretation of the radioactive age obtained from laboratory analysis.
The Genesis account does not give the answers to many questions we would like to ask regarding the creation and history of elementary matter; but it presents something vastly more important—a God unlimited in time and space who is superior to and independent of matter, a God who can in a moment arrange a world of atoms to suit His purposes, a God who can at the expression of His will bring into existence vast quantities of elementary matter organized into the surface structure and the complex organic life of an inhabited planet.
Still more incomprehensible is the knowledge that the supreme object of this God's concern is man, that all His resources are available for man's aid, and that He loves and cares for each individual of us as though there were not another object of His love in existence." One purpose of the Genesis account is to lead us to demonstrate what implicit and active faith in these truths can accomplish in a human life.
REFERENCES
1 Gen. 1:2.
2 The presence of water implies at least a water vapor atmosphere.
3 The SDA Bible Commentary, vol. 1, P. 209.
4 There are 384 million million million million atoms in one U.S. gallon of water.
5 There are only 92 different types of atoms found in the material of the earth. The total number of natural isotopes of these atoms is but 329.
6 Ellen G. White, Testimonies, vol. 8, p. 258.
7 Ps. 33:9.
8 Gen. 2:21, 22.
9 White. Education, p. 128.
10 Ex. 20:11.
11 International Geophysical Year (Document 124. U.S. Government Printing Office), p. 20. (1956.)
12 Gen. 1:16.
13 William T. Skilling and Robert S. Richardson, A Brief Text in Astronomy (New York: Henry Holt & Company, Inc., 1954), pp. 204, 195.
14 Ibid., pp. 267-271.
15 Astrophysics, J. A. Hynek, editor (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc.. 1951) chap. 13.
16 The Dark Day of May 19; 1780, may have been caused by the earth's passage through an unusually dense region of interstellar matter. On the day following a black scum was observed on the surface of still ponds and exposed containers of water. See Source Book for B,ble Students, DD. 134-141.
17 Serge A. Korff, "The Origin and Implications of the Cosmic Radiation," American Scientist, vol. 45 (September, 1957), p. 281.
18 Philip Morrison, "On the Origins of Cosmic Rays," Reviews of Modern Physics, vol. 29 (April, 1957), p. 235. A White, Steps to Christ (Pocket ed.), p. 100.
