Creation & Intelligent Design
- James Collazo
- Apr 30, 2021
- 10 min read
Updated: Nov 25
Introduction
As Christians, we believe that God created the world with intelligent design and purpose. We believe in one God who, by the power of his spoken Word (Logos, G3056, "logical definition of absolute cosmic truth"), made the heavens and the earth out of nothing (ex nihilo). God formed order from chaos, shaping the world from formless, lifeless matter.
This account differs from ancient Near Eastern creation stories, where gods battled chaos monsters to form the universe. In the Babylonian Enuma Elish, for example, Marduk killed the serpent goddess Tiamat and used her body to create heaven and earth. In contrast, Genesis describes one God who speaks and brings creation into being. He separates the chaotic tehom (H8415, "deep sea," Gen. 1:2)—a Hebrew word related to the Babylonian tiamat—into the waters above and below the sky (Gen. 1:6–7 TLV).
Genesis, therefore, corrects the pagan myths of its time by declaring that one all-powerful God rules over creation. The prophet Isaiah later returned to this image of chaos when he wrote, "In that day, the LORD will punish with his sword—his fierce, great, and powerful sword—Leviathan the gliding serpent, Leviathan the coiling serpent; he will slay the monster of the sea" (Isa. 27:1). The Jewish people never became a great seafaring nation like the Greeks because they often saw the sea as a symbol of danger and disorder.
When Moses wrote Genesis, he described God's spoken Word not as a magical incantation but as the expression of divine order—comparable to the scientific laws that govern creation, such as gravity or thermodynamics. In his gospel, John declares that Jesus is this divine Logos, the eternal Word made flesh (John 1:1–5). John drew on both Greek and Jewish thought (e.g., Heraclitus, Aristotle, Plato, and Philo), where Logos meant the reason or governing order of creation.
This understanding stands in sharp contrast to the Egyptian myth of Ptah. The Egyptians believed that Ptah created the world through a spell—a power that others could attempt to imitate or control. The name "Egypt" itself comes from the Greek noun Aiguptos (G125), derived from the Egyptian Hwt-ka-Ptah, meaning "House of the Spirit of Ptah," originally the name of the city of Memphis.
Some biblical scholars suggest that the Israelites borrowed from other ancient Near Eastern traditions, but Scripture shows that their familiarity with these myths served a corrective purpose. Rather than honoring or imitating pagan ideas, Genesis redefined them in the light of God's truth—revealing a Creator who rules by wisdom, not magic.
Sea of Galilee: Creation Revisited
Some people say that Matthew, Mark, and Luke did not mean to show the "historical Jesus" as the cosmic "Christ of faith." However, their stories about Jesus calming the storm on the Sea of Galilee (Matt. 8:23–27; Mark 4:35–41; Luke 8:22–25) prove otherwise. In this scene, Jesus shows his divine power as the Word of God—the Logos—who brings order out of chaos when he commands the wind and waves, "Quiet! Be still!"
When Jesus and his disciples crossed the Sea of Galilee—also known as the Sea of Tiberias or Lake Kinneret—a violent storm struck. The Greek word seismos (G4578), meaning "shake," "commotion," or "tempest," gives us the English word seismic. This gale was no ordinary storm. Hurricane-strength winds and massive waves threatened to sink their boat while Jesus slept calmly. To imagine the force of such a storm, consider a modern example. In 1992, a sharkiya—a cold, dry wind from the east—rushed down from the Golan Heights at 60 miles per hour (96 kilometers per hour), hitting the Israeli city of Tiberias with waves reaching 6 to 10 feet (2 to 3 meters) high.
In the gospel story, the Sea of Galilee becomes a small-scale picture of creation itself—a microcosm (Greek: mikros, kosmos, G3398 / G2889) of the world described in Genesis. The raging waters mirror the chaos at the beginning of creation, when the earth was "formless and void." The sea shook and roared like an earthquake striking a city or a typhoon flooding a coast. But when Jesus spoke, the storm stopped immediately. His word restored calm and order, just as God's Word once brought creation into being. The disciples exclaimed, "Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!" (Mark 4:41).
Hebrew Cosmology
Cosmology is the study of the structure and order of the world, combining the Greek words kosmos (world or order) and logos (word or reason). Biblical writers described a flat, disc-shaped earth set on solid foundations, with pillars holding up the sky that separated the waters above from the waters below (Gen. 1:7 TLV; cf. 1 Sam. 2:8; Job 9:6; Isa. 40:22). Windows in the sky let rain from the "waters above" fall to earth, as during the flood (Gen. 7:11).
The Bible describes the cosmos as fixed and unmoving, not spinning or rotating (1 Chron. 16:30; Pss. 93:1, 104:5). Old Testament writers said that God suspended the world over "the deep," an endless ocean surrounding the land with visible edges (Job 28:24, 38:13; Ps. 29:10). Beneath the earth lay Sheol (H7585), the netherworld or grave beneath the graves (Pss. 49:14, 88:11). Hebrew cosmology pictures the world as a fixed, enclosed realm set upon pillars, a structure that can be shaken from its foundations (Job 9:6).
In contemporary English, people still say "sunrise" and "sunset" because that is how the 24-hour day-night cycle appears from our viewpoint on Earth. King Solomon, called the "Teacher" (Hebrew: Kohelet, H6953; see Eccles. 1:1), wrote, "The sun rises, and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises" (Eccles. 1:5). This raises the question of whether the ancient Hebrews truly believed in a geocentric ("earth-centered") universe or used poetic language to describe what they saw.
The Old Testament does not clearly answer our questions about cosmology, but it points to an intelligent designer—God. The Hebrew poetry in Scripture does not present either a geocentric or heliocentric ("sun-centered") model. Instead, it focuses on God's sovereignty, emphasizing faith and theology rather than scientific explanation.
Noah's Flood and the End Times
In Scripture, the worldwide flood—when God told Noah, the son of Lamech, to build an ark and save his family—stands as a cosmic event (Gen. 6–9). The story shows that God preserved a righteous man and his household while releasing the waters of chaos to judge a corrupt world. The flood reversed the order of creation, but God remained in control from beginning to end. Today, believers who affirm Intelligent Design view the Noahic flood through both historical and scientific lenses, even though many critics dismiss it as myth.
Interestingly, more than three hundred flood stories appear across ancient civilizations, including the Epic of Gilgamesh from Mesopotamia. The Havasupai—literally "people of the blue-green water"—a Native American tribe who have lived in the Grand Canyon for over a thousand years, tell of a great flood that swept through the Colorado River and carved the canyon itself. Their tradition also speaks of a benevolent deity who saved a righteous person in a wooden vessel.
Geological evidence shows that massive floods really happened. In the Grand Canyon, huge boulders sit more than 200 feet (61 meters) above the canyon floor, showing that a mighty flood swept through the area about 400,000 years ago. In 1993, scientists discovered ancient streambeds, canyons, and shorelines buried beneath Black Sea sediments, along with preserved shrub roots now covered by mud that is more than seven thousand years old. This flood began when the rising Mediterranean Sea broke through the Bosporus Strait and poured saltwater into the freshwater Black Sea. The region lies near the mountains of Ararat in modern-day Armenia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Iran (Gen. 8:4). All this evidence suggests that massive floods of "biblical proportions" struck several parts of the world, leaving behind a shared human memory of disaster and divine rescue.
The New Testament shows that the Noahic flood was more than just a story from history—it teaches an important spiritual truth. The writer of Hebrews narrates, "By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith, he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith" (Heb. 11:7). The apostle Peter writes, "God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water" (1 Pet. 3:20).
Although the flood reversed creation, God still honored Noah's faith and kept him safe. Peter compares this rescue through water to baptism—a passage from death to new life in Christ—because the floodwaters represented death, while the ark represented resurrection and renewal (1 Pet. 3:21). Jesus also used the flood as a warning about his return: "As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man" (Matt. 24:37–38). Just as in Noah's time, many people will be too focused on everyday life to recognize the coming judgment. On that day, God will save only those who, like Noah, live by faith.
End Times: Chaos Revisited
In Revelation, John returns to the theme of the cosmic chaos monster first seen in Genesis. He writes, "So the great dragon was thrown down. The old snake, which is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world, was thrown down to the earth; and his angels were thrown down with him" (Rev. 12:9). Throughout Scripture, the devil represents disorder in creation—the chaotic beast from the depths, the serpent in Eden (Gen. 3:1–14), the sea monster Leviathan, and the great dragon at the end of the world. John also connects the image of the cosmic waters, or ocean, to the devil when he writes:
But the earth helped the woman by opening its mouth and swallowing the river the dragon had spewed out of his mouth (Rev. 12:16).
The dragon stood on the shore of the sea. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name (Rev. 13:1).
This theme may sound mythological to modern readers, not only supernatural—that is, beyond the natural world. Revelation also reflects a geocentric view of the cosmos, much like Genesis. In both, a war between God and the chaos monster threatens to destroy creation through lawlessness (2 Thess. 2:1–7). Before Jesus begins his thousand-year reign, an angel will seize "the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years" (Rev. 20:2).
Revelation also teaches a teleology (Greek: telos, G5056, "end") of creation—a philosophical and theological view of God's final purpose, design, and goal for the world. Jesus identifies himself as this very telos when he declares, "It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End" (Rev. 21:6), and again, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End" (Rev. 22:13). Alpha (Α) is the first letter of the Greek alphabet, and Omega (Ω) is the last, showing that Jesus is the ultimate reason—the Logos—of all things (John 1:1–4). He is everything from A to Z.
Prayer
Blessed are you, LORD our God, King of heaven and earth. You spoke creation out of chaos, made us in your image, stayed faithful when we turned away, and sent your Son to redeem all things. May we obey your truth and your commands. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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