What are the differences between the biblical and scientific accounts of the creation of the earth?

Answer 1

Although most Christians believe there is only one biblical account of the creation of the earth, there are actually two and they differ to an irreconcilable extent. Most people see the first (Genesis 1:1-2:4a) as a broad account of creation, with the second (Genesis 2:4b-2:20) as a more detailed story of the creation of man, but Leon R. Kass (The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis) says that the second creation story departs from the first not only in content but also in tone, mood and orientation. He emphasises the independence of each story from the other and says we must scrupulously avoid reading into the second story any facts or notions taken from the first, and vice versa.

That leaves us with two biblical creation stories that are so different that, at most, only one can be true. The first story begins with the creation of daylight on the first day, although the sun is not created until the fourth day. The creation of a very unscientific 'firmament' takes a whole day, and it separates the waters above from the waters below. The sun, moon and stars are lights set into the firmament above the earth, with the role of the sun being to rule the day and that of the moon to rule the night. It seems that man and all living creatures were created just as they are today. The contribution of the second creation story to modern Christian thinking is mainly to place creation at the beginning of the biblical genealogies, or around four thousand BCE.

Science says that, far from being tiny lights placed in earth's 'firmament' in the recent past, the stars are billions of years older than the earth and are massive, hot bodies so far away from earth that the distances can only be measured in the number of years it would take for light to travel from them - light years. Not only is the sun older than earth, it is the centre of our solar system, not the earth. Life evolved over an immense period of time, and modern humans are the result of a long evolutionary process.

Although The Bible is actually silent on the creation of the earth itself, which appears to be pre-existing in both creation stories, science says that it was created from the debris of an exploding supernova star in our celestial neighbourhood. A small part of that debris, a hot gas consisting of heavy elements, was captured in orbit around the sun and eventually coalesced into the earth and the other planets.

The early Church Father, Origen had this to say (On First Principles, 3.1.1) about the biblical account:
"Now what man of intelligence will believe that the first and the second and the third day, and the evening and the morning existed without the sun and moon and stars? And that the first day if we may so call it, was even without a heaven? And who is so silly as to believe that God, after the manner of a farmer, "planted a paradise eastward in Eden", and set in it a visible and palpable "tree of life", of such a sort that anyone who tasted its fruit with his bodily teeth would gain life: and again that one could partake of "good and evil" by masticating the fruit taken from the tree of that name? And when God is said to "walk in the paradise in the cool of the day" and Adam to hide himself behind a tree, I do not think anyone will doubt that these are figurative expressions which indicate certain mysteries through a semblance of history and not through actual events."

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Answer 2

They are vast with the scientific relying solely upon the physical evidences and their imaginations while the Bible relies upon the written word of God as revealed by Him and confirmed by Jesus about 4,000 years after the Genesis 1 & 2 events.

Over the centuries, particularly in the Age of Englightenment in Europe, philosophers and other learned people became critics of the Church teachings of the time. In my opinion, this was the right and just thing to do as the teachings held by the main Church group - a monopoly of some truth and pagan ideas - were not able to answer some basic questions about our Earth and Universe. But as the Church once refused to accept secular teachings as at least potentially possible, the main teaching of evolution from this time period is refusing to accept the biblical teachings as even existing as truth. And so the quite 'competition' of thoughts continues with critics hammering away at religious thought and now vice versa. Take the contention that the Creation account in Genesis is reflecting two separate stories. To accept this, one must read the accounts in just that way. However, it becomes quite obvious that the accounts can and should be read in a complementary &/or supplementary fashion.

Generally speaking then, Genesis 1, presents God's acts of creation in outline fashion. The intent is to provide a panoramic view of God's creative activity - as if the readers themselves are standing in the midst of it all happening. The creation of man occurs on the sixth day, but there is nothing stated about the manner of God's pinnacle of His physical creation or how the creation of men and women are related in time or nature. Hence in Genesis 2, God's specific acts in creating man are detailed, thus providing a focus on the events of the sixth day. There is no difference in the sequencing of the events of the creation days, only an expansion of the details of the central creature - man on the sixth day.