Creation vs Evolution -- REALLY?

Thirty years ago, Dr. Frings, my zoology professor was notorious for his introduction to evolution. He brought his Bible to class, thumped it loudly, and proclaimed: “I am not an atheist!”

Yes, he accepted the theory of evolution, but felt it necessary to proclaim that he still believed in God. Yes, we could learn about evolution and still believe in God the Creator.
And yes, how sad that he needed to make such a proclamation before he started teaching an important subject.

Worst of all, Divine Creation is seen as pitted against evolutionary theory. AS IF the holiest writings in existence should be treated as a mere science textbook. AS IF God would be pleased at the rancor that surrounds His greatest achievement…

AS IF one could look at Creation as anything but divine – yet ignore the deep secrets embedded in that story.

This brings me to a question by one of our Hebrew students: If God created the sun and moon on the fourth day, how could they tell time for the first three days?

The text itself is pretty clear. We first have to understand the meaning of the Hebrew word “yom,” usually translated as “day.”
In psalm 90, we read

כִּי אֶלֶף שָׁנִים בְּעֵינֶיךָ כְּיוֹם אֶתְמוֹל כִּי יַעֲבֹר וְאַשְׁמוּרָה בַלָּיְלָה:

“A thousand years in Your eyes are as a passing day, it passes in a watch in the night.”

The word “yom” – Hebrew for day – also means an indeterminate amount of time. It could mean a year, a thousand years, a million years. The Bible itself tells us that.

We understand time in our own terms: 24 hours = a day, seven days in a week, 365 days in a year.

The Master of the World is Eternal! Why would we expect Him to work in 24 hour increments of time?

Further, why would He was time in the Creation story to even bother informing us that on the fourth “day,” He made it possible to tell time. But that’s exactly what He does:

Here’s the first day: 1. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And a wind from God moved upon the face of the waters.
3. And God said, Let there be light; and there was light. 4. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. 5. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.

We have light, we even have evening and morning, but we have no hint of the ability to tell time.

When Hashem actually began creating, it was so deep, so embedded in Divine mystery, it actually takes a lot of chutzpah to think we could understand this process easily and simply!

Also note, the Torah does not call “day one” the “first” day. The Hebrew is “yom echad.” “Echad” does not simply translate as one, and definitely not as first – there literally was not a “first” day. It was: A day -- a unique day, one that stands alone – a day in which all things are united.

We see that day one isn’t numbered like the rest of the days; it could be 24 hours or a million years. We also see that light is created – but this is a spiritual light. We still have no clue about telling time at all.

Now, let’s look at the fourth day: 1 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; 15. And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth; and it was so. 16. And God made two great lights; the large light to rule the day, and the small light to rule the night; and he made the stars.

This is our FIRST hint of time as we know it.

The text itself lets us know that Creation is much deeper … mysterious … than we see from a superficial reading that merely takes the days in order.

Do I believe that God COULD HAVE done this in 6 days and then rested?

I believe that God can do anything He wants!

However, our tradition has much to say about the mysteries of Creation.

There are midrashim that God created and destroyed worlds before He got around to the one that we know.

It sounds fantastic, but then we wonder: Ice age? Age of dinosaurs? Worlds we only see in museums, science books, and tv documentaries?

The Talmud itself (Chagigah 12a) says “the first man extended from one end of the world to the other.”

Now, we usually picture Adam as a normal person. The sages of the Talmud did not. They looked at Creation as the ultimate mystery – and not something everyone was well-equipped to learn.

The Talmudic descriptions of Creation make it clear that they don’t see it as a mere retelling of: He did this on the first day, that on the second …. The rabbis saw Creation as complex and mysterious.

The mystical text, the Zohar, describes Creation as the expansion of an infinitesimal point. They practically describe the Big Bang! Just as the Talmud takes the Creation story to mysterious depths we cannot conceive, so does the mystical view of Creation.


Here’s another example of what the Creation story doe not teach … Exactly what kind of animals did He make in the early stages of Creation?

The text doesn’t give us a clue.

I do feel secure in saying that Boston terriers weren’t included in the animals created on the sixth day! But then, almost all modern dog breeds result from years of evolutionary changes – some natural, some induced by man… definitely a form of evolution.

I want to complete our look at Creation with the last “day”?

What was the last day” (Shabbat)

What did God do on that day? (rested)

But why did He rest? Isaiah said that God doesn’t grow tired or weary. Therefore the midrash (mechilta, bachodesh 7) asked: If he is not subject to tiredness, why does Torah say He rested on the seventh day? … To teach US that if He, who doesn’t need rest, did so on the seventh day, surely human beings … who do grow tired … need to rest on the seventh day!

We need rest. God doesn’t!

Really, it’s a scary thought, God Himself resting! We need Him 24/7!

This is all to say that it doesn’t matter whether we take the Creation story literally as a seven day saga – or a process that took place over billions of years …

The Creation story has so much to teach … especially that the Kadosh Baruch Hu IS the source of all life and everything that has ever come into being.

OF COURSE we don’t know the exact mechanisms behind Creation. However, no matter how we read the story – literally or through the eyes of evolution – we still come to God as Creator.

And THAT is the point of the Creation story. Whether you take it literally or expand it to include evolution, the main point remains the same: the Holy One is the Creator … the world is His …

We have just come from an intense – and exhausting – holiday cycle. If we learned ANYTHING, this should be it: It is our job to acknowledge His role and our duty to help Him make the world even better.