Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig.

Today, the creation of life and biological diversity, part eight.

For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonable faith.org.

Today we want to continue our discussion of John Walton's functional interpretation of Genesis

Chapter 1.

We ended last time by saying that Walton has an enormous burden of proof with regard to justifying

his interpretation.

He needs to show that Genesis 1 involves only functional creation and not also the creation of material objects at the same time.

Otherwise, his view will reduce to the typical literal interpretation of Genesis 1 that God actually brings into being

over the course of 6 24-hour days, the plants, the animals, the dry land, the astral bodies,

and so forth. Walton needs to show that all God does during these six days is to assign functions to material

objects.

Well, can he sustain this burden of proof?

Well, let's first look at ancient Near Eastern cosmology.

Walton claims that when we look at ancient Near Eastern creation myths, we find,

and I quote, that people in the ancient world believed that something existed not by virtue of its material properties,

but by virtue of its having a function in an ordered system.

But does the evidence support this claim?

I think that the answer is clearly no.

Walton points out, and I quote, that nearly all the creation accounts of the ancient world start their story

with no operational system in place. Egyptian texts talk about a singularity, nothing

having yet been separated out. All is inert and undifferentiated."

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