GeoCreationism.com

 11 Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. 12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.– Genesis 1:11 to 13

Placing God’s creative pronouncement of Day 3 with the appearance of seeded plants on land does not fit into the Geologic Timeline.  The reason is because the sun, moon, and stars were visible in the firmament about 1.9 billion years ago (Day 4), but seed-bearing plants and fruit-bearing trees did not come about until a long time after:

The earliest evidence for the appearance of land plants, in the form of fossilised spores, comes from the Ordovician period (510 - 439 million years ago), a time when the global climate was mild and extensive shallow seas surrounded the low-lying continental masses. (These spores were probably produced by submerged plants that raised their sporangia above the water - wind dispersal would offer a means of colonising other bodies of water.) However, DNA-derived dates suggest an even earlier colonisation of the land, around 700 million years ago. 

This article goes on to say that actual seeded plants first appeared even later:

While the earliest-known seeds date back 365 million years ago, they must have begun to evolve much earlier. Up till now, precursors of seeds were not known from the fossil record. However, a new fossil discovery, of a seed precursor with a structure seemingly involved in pollination, dates this development to at least 385 million years ago. – “Plant and Animal Evolution”, University of Waikato

In other words, the plants mentioned in Day 3 did not appear until long after Day 4.  Part of the solution to this dilemma is addressed in our word study on “Let“.  In that study, the creative pronouncements are interpreted as commands by God to remove some “insurmountable hindrance” to the appearance of the subject of a given creative pronouncement.  For example, Day 1 removed the hindrance to light, Day 2 removed the hindrance to a firmament, etc. With this approach, a given Creation Day does not have to contain the end result of removing that hindrance.  Let us apply this to Day 3.

As you will recall in my post “Creation of Dry Land“, Day 3 marked the beginning of Plate Tectonics, which was about 2.4 billion years ago, and removed the insurmountable hindrance to dry land.  Certainly the absence of land would constitute an insurmountable hindrance to the appearance of land-plants as well. But, the land appeared, started to dry, and the first signs of plant-like activity were not too far behind (geologically speaking):

Toward the end of the of the Archean Period and at the beginning of the Proterozoic Period, about 2.5 billion years ago, oxygen-forming photosynthesis began to occur. The first fossils, in fact, were a type of blue-green algae that could photosynthesize. – “Earth’s Beginnings: The Origin of Life” by Eric McLamb

In other words, the beginning of plant life and the creation of land are intimately connected.  Plate tectonics removed the hindrance to the existence of dry land, and therefore removed the hindrance to plants as well.  Once there was dry land to host the plants, the earth started with algae and saw a progression of increasingly complex forms appear until plants appeared 500 million years ago, and finally seeded appeared on the earth roughly 365 to 385 million years ago.

Still, this doesn’t address God’s mechanism for actually creating the plants, and Day 3 doesn’t have much to say about that mechanism, leaving room for anything from Natural Selection to Divine Intervention, or some combination of the two.  However, Day 3 isn’t completely silent on the matter.  There are some nuances to Genesis 1:11 that bear mention.

In the NIV translation, God said to “Let the land produce vegetation.”  Did you catch that?  God didn’t produce the vegetation; the land did.  God only removed the insurmountable hindrance preventing it.

Second, God had the land produce plants that would produce seeds “according to their kind.”  This suggests something similar to a chicken/egg dilemma… a plant/seed dilemma!  Which came first?  The plant! See what God actually said (emphasis added), “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” So, with the removal of an insurmountable hindrance, the land was to produce plants that would produce seeds… implying seeds did not produce the first seeded plants!

Finally, the plants God mentioned specifically are seed bearing plants.  No other plants are mentioned.  The plants not mentioned are bryophytes, ferns, and fern allies.  The bryophytes developed before the seeded plants; ferns and fern allies appeared just before (or just after depending on who you read). 

To review then: on Day 3, the newly formed land was freed by God to begin a process that would ultimately produce seeded plants approximately 2 billion years later.  Given the fossil record that began shortly after God’s pronouncement, and the progressive complexity of plant life over time, leading eventually to the seeded plants God announced on Day 3, and the picture looks conspicuously close to Evolution.

As I describe in Evolution and Geocreationism II, I do not subscribe to a godless Evolution, but its mechanism of Natural Selection would appear to be God’s handiwork.  Though fully capable of creating plants right off the bat, it would seem that God did not.  He was content with authoring, commanding, and perhaps overseeing the process by which His will would be done, and I am content with it as well.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 31st, 2007 at 9:58 pm and is filed under Bible Commentary, The Science, Day 3. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.