Board index ‹ Creation and Evolution

[Boba Fett]

When di God create bacteria, fungi, and protozoans? The creation story fails to account for anything other than animals, plants, and humans.

[jimwalton]

I take the Genesis 1 account to be a functional account of creation, not the account of material creation. In other words, it is about the role and function that the various elements of creation fill, not their material manufacture. For instance, light and dark function in sequence to give us day and night, evening and morning (time). The firmament functions to give us our weather systems. The earth functions to bring forth vegetation. The sun, moon, and stars function to give us seasons and times. Animal life functions in cycles and balance to populate the world for variety, foods and beauty. Humans function to be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, subdue it and rule as representatives of God.

Thus saying, the Bible affirms without hesitation that God created all that is. It just doesn't tell us when, by what processes, or how long it took. Many Christians believe in both evolution (evolutionary theism: things evolved with God's guidance) and creation (God was still the source, the intelligence behind, and the guider of all that we see now).

In direct answer to your question, under a young earth view, bacteria, et al. would have been created on days 5 & 6, as the waters and the earth teem with living creatures. (We certainly wouldn't expect the ancients to know anything about microscopic animals and plants.) In the view of an evolutionary creationist (such as I am), they evolved in the course of time as science tells us they did, but not without the guiding "interference" and design of God.