Mr. Mack, Science, and Genesis 1-11

During the first week of my seventh grade year, I asked my science teacher, Mr. Mack, whether he believed the Bible.

"I believe everything from Genesis 12 to the end," he confidently asserted.

"What's wrong with the first eleven chapters?" I asked him.

"Well," he cocked his head to one side, "I don't believe those chapters about creation and the flood literally happened. They are good moral stories."

"Oh," I replied naively, "you don't have any confidence in the part of the Bible that is the basis for everything else in it? Then how do you really put any confidence in the rest of it?"

Mr. Mack laughed, leaned over on his swan-necked lab sink, and popped back, "What are you going to be -- a REVEREND?"

That day I received the epithet, "Rev. Brooks" from Mr. Mack. The one thing I never wanted to be was a preacher, but at least once the nickname came in handy. Since I was now Rev. Brooks to Mr. Mack, I asked him if I could have the last five minutes of class one day to pass out slips of paper with a Scripture verse on each one for every student in our science class. He consented.

Oh, and by the end of the year, after I offered a friendly challenge to his evolutionary theories every now and then, Mr. Mack told me that he was beginning to come around on Genesis 1-11.

Here are some facts about science and Genesis 1-11. Scientific facts do not oppose Genesis 1-11. Many areas of science support it.

SCIENCE AND GENESIS 1-11:
Yeah, but what about all those stories in the first eleven chapters? Aren’t they just myths?

Actually, there is no contradiction between the facts of Genesis and the facts of science (Psalm 19:1; Romans 1:19). There is a difference between some theories of science and some interpretations of Genesis. While scientific theories and biblical interpretations change, the Word of God doesn’t.

Science actually supports the accuracy of Genesis 1-11.
Astronomy supports the idea that the universe had a beginning.
Geology supports the order of creation in Genesis 1 – first a universe, then a world, then sea life, next lower life forms, with man the highest and latest of them.
Physics’ 2nd Law of Thermodynamics that the universe is running out of available energy supports the beginning and end of the world, not an eternal existence.
Mathematics' Law of Probability demonstrates the impossibility of evolutionary chance and necessity of an intelligent power.
Biology agrees with Genesis that animals produce after their own kind (Gen 1:11, 12, 21).
Anthropology has shown conclusively that all only one race of mankind exists (Acts 17:15), supporting the idea of one common ancestor among us.
Human genome mapping has demonstrated that all humans descend from 30 females who were all born from one woman.

Even evolutionary theory’s concept of punctuated equilibrium demonstrates that life forms started suddenly and abundantly as does the fossil record.
Evolution also demonstrates that large-scale mutations of life forms have never been observed in either historical or fossil record.
Evolutionary theory supports the idea of creation. In Julian Huxley’s book, Evolution in Action, that on an evolutionary time scale of a half billion years, the odds of a chance occurrence of life are 1 with 3 million zeros to one.