So, what is creationisms answer to
@leroy 's questions?
Since you asked.....
Our scenario goes back to the creation of the universe itself as the single act of an energy source that is incomprehensible even to science.
Since the Creator takes credit for that act, it stands to reason that he had a purpose in its creation, since highly intelligent minds never do anything for no good reason.
The Creator tells us that he prepared a “formless and waste” planet in one small galaxy, in one small solar system, to further his project. (which I believe will result in the eventual population of the whole universe with many diverse life forms that we already see here on earth. If its one thing that Creator relishes, its variety.)
He altered this planet's atmosphere and divided its waters in order to support life. Genesis describes in simple terms (for an uneducated people) what he did, and the order in which living things appeared in the periods of time he allotted for each creative period, which he simply called “days”. In describing “evening and morning” for each of those creative periods, he gave away the fact that they were not 24 hour days but possibly eons of undetermined time. A literal “day” would have gone from evening to evening, not evening to morning. As one "day" concluded, the dawn of another "day" began. With each period was a closing declaration that all was going to plan. On the final day, God changed his declaration to "very good".....he was well pleased with his accomplishments. The seventh "day" began, but there is no concluding declaration because we believe that it is still running, sorting out all the difficult problems that would have arisen if free willed beings decided to misuse their gift. It too will end well as God's purpose for his universe will proceed as he wills it to.
So first of all we remove the 24 hour nonsense. Science knows that the earth and the universe are ancient...but they also know that it all had a beginning. We see the Creator as the ‘Beginner’.
The order of creation in Genesis also shows remarkable accuracy in the fact that living things began to exist in the ocean. So marine creatures and flying creatures were our first animate organisms.
The one thing that Genesis does not tell us is when microscopic life began, but science can fill in those blanks.
“Light” was the first thing that Genesis states as being there from the beginning. All life requires light and what light produces....so light and water were there at the beginning and what followed next was vegetation...also a living organism, but not classed by Genesis with animate creatures which came a very long time later. Vegetation requires soil and we know that soil is teeming with bacteria in large variety.....all there for a purpose....a very important purpose since vegetation was to support all life in one way or another.
I see a pattern emerge here that gels with my logic as a 'spiritual' person.
The first life, invisible and inanimate was there long before the animate creatures, who all had their habitats prepared well in advance of their creation. No "flukes" or suggestions are necessary. Those first cells, needed to promote the lives of other living things, were created like everything else...with a purpose and with sustainability and adaptability already built in.
Everything meshes with what Genesis says...you just have to study what it actually says rather than what you think it says in a cursory reading. I find no difficulty meshing what the Bible says with what science knows. (not what it assumes to fit a theory)