geocreationism.com

 20 And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky.” 21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” 23 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day. — Genesis 1:20-23

In Day 5 - Determining a Date (Part 1), I discussed why it is tricky to determine when Creation Day 5 occurred.  For Old Earth Creationists (OECs) who consider Genesis 1 to be historical, they generally map a Day to a period (i.e., “Age” or era) of the Earth’s development.  Such theories are reffered to collectively as Day Age theories. 

While Geocreationism is itself a Day Age theory, most Day Age theories fall short of a standard that I believe Young Earth Creationists (YECs) are correct for imposing: that Genesis 1 be interpreted literally, and that Creation Days not overlap.  One Day Age theory that fails at this standard is Progressive Creationism, which considers much of Genesis 1 to be figurative, and allows Day 5 and Day 6 to overlap.  In contrast, Glenn R. Morton’s Days of Proclamation Theory passes this test by making a case that God’s creative statements, rather than being historical statements that occurred in conjunction with Earth’s development, are instead proclamations made before creation even began.  Consequently, the ages that result are allowed to overlap, because Genesis 1 is recording the sequential proclamation of the ages, as opposed to recording the ages themselves.

Geocreationism is unique as a Day Age Theory, because it considers God’s creative pronouncements to be literal historical events that usher in sequential and non-overlapping geologic ages.  The key is that a Creation Day need only last long enough for God to start a given phase of development, thereby preserving the non-overlapping nature of the Creation Days.  One could ask how this prevents the development started by one Day from overlapping with that of another, and the answer is that it doesn’t.  If you read the scripture carefully, and literally, a Day only records what God had to do to “let” the next phase of development begin.  Scripture doesn’t require that development complete during that Day.  Once the domino is tipped, that’s enough.  

Let us have a quick review of how this played out during the first 4 days: There was light on Day 1, but it still continued getting brighter during Day 2. There was a firmament on Day 2, but it still continued getting bigger on Days 3 and 4.  There was dry land on Day 3, but it continued developing on Day 4.  The evolution that that led to seeded plants started on Day 3, but they didn’t appear until Day 4 (or perhaps even between the evening of Day 4 and the dawn of Day 5). Finally, there were visible celestial bodies visible on Day 4, but even today they get obscured and then revealed again.  Day 5 is pretty similar, but a little different.

Based on Days 1 to 4, you would think God created the first birds.  Or herhaps He kicked off the evolution that would lead to them.  Well, He did neither.  On Day 5, God did not create sealife or birds as original life forms, but created additional sealife and additional birds from those that already existed! Compare this to Days 1 to 4.  Day 1 was began when an atmosphere could not begin without getting blown away by another meteor.  Day 2 began when there was no separation between the sky and the seas.  Day 3 began when there was no dry land and no land plants.  Day 4 began when no celestial bodies were visible from the earth.  Each of these Days began when there wasn’t any of what God was about to create.  But when did Day 5 begin? After there were already sealife and birds!  Here is the thing: at the beginning of Day 5, existing sealife and birds were not flourishing, having just been largely killed off as part of the worldwide disaster that caused the dinosaurs to go extinct 65 million years ago.  Ooops.  I’m getting ahead of myself again.

The key to understanding Day 5 is in the phrase “according to their kind”.  God commanded the seas to teem with sealife “according to their kind.”  It is a phrase implying God took existing life that wasn’t flourishing, and made them flourish.  He took a thin bird population that was already there and made the skies full of them.  But once again, I am getting ahead of myself.  We still haven’t discussed why I believe, scientifically speaking, the Dinosaur extinction is when Day 5 occurred.  Well you may recall, I closed out Part 1 as follows:

Here is the question: was there a time when there was some sea life and some birds, and then all of a sudden (relatively speaking), there were a whole lot of both, relative to mammal life on earth?  And can we find a significant event that removed any hindrance to this happening?  The answer it turns out is a resounding yes.

According to a PBS article entitled Birds Arrived Comparatively Late, actual birds first appear in the fossil record around 150 million years ago.  However, this wouldn’t be the event recorded in Day 5, because it would seem these first birds later went nearly extinct.  This account is detailed in this PBS story about Alan Feduccia, a professor of biology at the University of North Carolina who believes in evolution, but does not believe birds evolved from dinosaurs.

In 1996 Feduccia investigated an intriguing bird that lived about 135 million years ago, just after Archaeopteryx. The bird, Liaoningornis, did not look like a dinosaur bird at all. It had a breastbone similar to modern birds, with massive flight muscles that enabled longer flights.

It was found alongside fossils of ancient birds not unlike Archaeopteryx. Feduccia believes that birds were very widespread by that date, occupying a variety of habitats. He believes most of them died out with the dinosaurs, about 65 million years ago.

The ancestors of all today’s birds evolved later, he says, between 65 and 53 million years ago, independently of the dinosaurs. This is the “big bang theory” of birds. Feduccia and his fellow sceptics - it must be stressed they are in the minority - regard any similarity between birds and dinosaurs as an example of convergent evolution, by which two independent groups grow to look alike.

This is when I believe is when Day 5 occurred: about 65 million years ago.  According to the article, Feduccia believes that while bird-like creatures did evolve from dinosaurs, there was another line of bird-evolution.  It was from smaller reptiles that evolved beside the larger dinosaur strand. Then the dinosaur-strand died out with the other dinosaurs, whatever reptile-descended birds survived the mass extinction flourished like never before, evolving like crazy between 65 million and 53 million years ago.  Now, my point is not to take a position on whether modern birds evolved from dinosaurs or smaller reptiles, though it is an intriguing subject.  The point on which scientists agree is that the modern bird did not flourish until after the dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago.  They also agree that the reason birds had never flourished like this before is because of the flying dinosaurs keeping them in check.  The implication is that it kept their “natural” selection in check.  But, with the dinosaurs gone, the birds had no competition any more.

As for fish, they had been teeming already until 65 million years ago.  However, they experienced massive losses at the same time the dinosarus died out.  Afterwards, they not only recovered, but whales and other mammalian sealife that had never exised before (the “great creatures of the sea” in verse 21) could now evolve (from land animals!) and join them.

Placing Day 5 at 65 million years ago reflects the fact that sealife flourished only after the dinosaurs died out.  Then birds flourised.  Then larger sealife (i.e., whales) flourished.  Finally, land mammals flourished (Day 6).  Days 5 and 6 therefore do not record the first appearance sealife, birds, and land mammals, because those events overlap.  Rather, they capture the order in which they flourished, and the language of God’s pronouncements says exactly that.

Notice one other subtlety.  Birds flourished after fish, but before whales.  However, that overlap is okay, because they all happened on Day 5.  To me, this helps confirm the Geocreationist interpretation of Day 5, and in turn confirms the Biblical account itself.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 10th, 2007 at 10:01 am and is filed under Bible Commentary, The Science, Creationism, Evolution, Day 5. 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.